


Come Again To Carthage

by GilShalos1



Series: Consensus Ad Idem [4]
Category: Law & Order
Genre: Angst, Complete, Crimes & Criminals, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-13
Updated: 2008-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 04:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 46,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8272522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GilShalos1/pseuds/GilShalos1
Summary: After the events of "Ghosts" Jack McCoy and Regan Markham face a case with legal and ethical challenges. The small town of Carthage, NY, may hold answers to professional and personal questions.





	1. He's Not Noticing That I'm Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> I am not NY native or indeed an American, as my woefully inadequate knowledge of NY geography and the American legal system makes perfectly clear! I do, however, love Law and Order. Here, we get the episodes years late and often out of order, which has led to my long-standing confusion between who is in the show when and why and how old they are. My fannish imagination therefore has its own chronology, which differs from the show's canon in only three substantial ways: Lennie Briscoe didn't retire; Jack McCoy was snap-frozen ten years ago (since that's the age he is in the reruns that are all our free-to-air channels see fit to give us) ; and my series kicks off at the beginning of series seventeen, so it is substantially AU to everything from then on.
> 
> The title is a quote from "The Merchant of Venice" – the quote and the play don't relate to the story, except that the town of Carthage, NY features. The chapter titles are each lines from songs by the Cowboy Junkies. The songs themselves don't relate to the chapters.

 

* * *

 _Office of District Attorney Arthur_   _Branch_

_10th Floor_

_One Hogan Place_

_5.50 pm Thursday 30th November 2006_

* * *

 

"And are you going to get a conviction on Murray?" Arthur Branch asked.

"It's still line ball," Jack McCoy answered. "We've got the continuance we needed, so that's something."

"Good. And McMillan?"

McCoy shrugged. " Adler is trying some kind of Twinkie defence. I don't know if Jamie Ross will let it into the courtroom but it looks likely."

"Don't let that trial turn into a battle of the experts," Branch warned. "Those boys committed a horrible crime and the public want them to be punished, not treated."

"I want them punished too, Arthur," McCoy said. "It was a horrendous crime. But once Jamie granted Adler's motion to sever we had no choice – and the evidence against McMillan is a lot weaker than the evidence against Braxton and Lewis."

"How is it weaker?" Branch demanded. "All three of them broke into Miss Yates's house. All three of them forced themselves on her. All three of them were there when she died."

" Adler is arguing that McMillan was just following the lead set by Braxton and Lewis," McCoy said.

"Well, did he try to stop them?" Branch asked.

"I'm not arguing, Arthur, I'm just telling you where the defence is going," McCoy said, voice rising. "Skoda has seen McMillan. He says that McMillan is of low intelligence and he has a history of drug use. In layman's terms, he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer."

"Neither the intoxication defence  _nor_ the stupidity defence is accepted in New York," Branch said.

" Adler's trying for jury nullification," McCoy said.

"Well, don't let him get it! What do I  _pay_ you for, Jack?"

"Message received and understood," McCoy said.

"Good. So, tell me, how's Markham?"

"Back at work. Black and blue." McCoy said.

"She holding up okay?"

"How do you mean?" McCoy asked.

"A madman beat her, tied her up and nearly killed her," Branch said. "Some people spend the rest of their lives locked in their bedrooms after that kind of experience. That's how I mean."

" Regan Markham isn't locked in her bedroom," McCoy assured his boss. "She's prepping a witness in conference room four."

"If she comes unglued in the middle of the McMillan trial …" Branch said.

"She's not going to come unglued, Arthur," McCoy said.

"Regardless," Branch said. "I still expect you to win, Jack. I need a result on this one."

McCoy nodded and stood up, accepting his dismissal.  _Need a result …_ Branch had done enough press after Louise Yates's body had been found to tie his personal credibility to the convictions he was now demanding McCoy secure.  _Less than the maximum, and Arthur will lose quite a bit of political skin._

Back in his own office, he picked up his phone. "Regan, can you come in here for a minute? With the McMillan file?"

He'd dismissed Branch's concerns. Regan was doing fine. When she appeared at his office door, McCoy told himself that again.  _Regan is doing fine_.

She looked a long way from fine. Her bruises had begun to turn green in places and the abrasions on her face were heavily scabbed.  _It's nothing permanent. She's on the mend. She's doing fine._

"Where are we on McMillan?" he asked her.

"Same as we were yesterday," Regan said. She sat down in his visitor's chair without waiting to be asked. "Did you speak to Skoda?"

"No."

"You should," Regan said. "He's not about to sign off on Adler's argument, but he sounded a little cautious nonetheless."

"Cautious?" McCoy asked. "About what?"

She shrugged. "About whether McMillan's guilt is the same as Braxton and Lewis."

"That doesn't sound like Skoda." McCoy leaned back in his chair and steepled his hands.

"How about 'The question isn't just how dumb you need to be to know that rape and murder are wrong, it's also how smart you need to be to work out a way to escape two meth-cranked psychopaths.'"

McCoy grinned. "That does sound like Skoda."

"Talk to him," Regan said.

" Arthur wants McMillan to go away for the same time as the other two," McCoy said. "He won't be happy with anything that undermines that."

"You sent Skoda to see him," Regan said. "If we don't call him, Adler will. He scares me a little, Jack."

"He's no fool," McCoy said. "He takes cases where the issue interests him – where he gets the chance to set a precedent. High risk, high reward. He's smart, he's good in the courtroom." McCoy paused, and then grinned at Regan. "I'm better. Don't worry about Adler."

"Is it okay with you if I ignore you on that?" Regan said.

"I'll talk to Skoda tomorrow. Can you ask – "

" Colleen to set it up? Yeah. Anything else?" Regan asked.

"What else do you have on your plate this week?"

"Not a lot," Regan said. "And I appreciate you keeping my desk clear, but I can take on more if you need."

"We'll talk about that on Monday," McCoy said. "Sit in on Skoda tomorrow."

"No problem," Regan said, and got up.

McCoy studied her.  _She holding up okay?_ It occurred to him that he really had no idea. "You got dinner plans?" he asked her.

"Yeah," Regan said. "Actually. Rigallino's. Do you need me to stay?"

"No," McCoy said. "No, not at all. Go. Enjoy your – date?"

"Thanks," Regan said with a smile. "I will."

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 

Regan spent a good fifteen minutes in the Ladies trying to make her bruises and grazes look better with concealer and foundation. Eventually she gave it up as a lost cause, but the effort made her late enough to the restaurant that Ben Strickland was already seated when she got there.

He jumped up and held her chair for her, which made Regan feel like she was in an old movie – a feeling she didn't mind at all.

She was less thrilled about the amount of time Strickland seemed to feel necessary to spend exclaiming over her injuries. Regan told him that yes, her face was still sore, but it was mending, she let him run his fingers over the rope burns on her wrist. She gave him the bullet points on what had happened when he asked but when he pressed for details she shook her head.

"I don't really want to talk about it, Ben," she said. "I don't want to – to  _dwell_  on what happened."

"You know, you shouldn't bottle it up," Strickland said. "That stuff – you gotta deal with it."

"I'm dealing with it," Regan said. It came out too sharply. She smiled at Strickland and repeated more softly: "I  _am_ dealing with it."

"Because, you know, I've seen a lot of things, in five years in Narcotics," Strickland said. "If you want to talk about it, I'm here for you."

"Sure," Regan said. "Good to know."

"It must have been terrifying for you, to wake up and find you were so helpless."

"Yeah," Regan said. She took a gulp of wine and then pushed her plate a little away. "You know, I'm kinda less hungry than I thought."

"You need to keep your strength up," Strickland said.

"Sure," Regan said. She picked up her fork again. Another fifteen minutes toying with her pasta saw Strickland finish his own meal, and then Regan gave him an apologetic smile. "You know, Ben, I'm really tired."

"Of course," he said. "Of course you are. You're still recovering. Come on, I'll take you home."

Out on the sidewalk Regan looked around for a cab. None was in sight. She hunched her shoulders against the cold and Strickland put his arm around her shoulders.

"Let's walk up the block," he said. "Might have more luck."

"Sure," Regan said. Strickland's arm around her shoulders was warm and reassuring, and she began to feel better. "Hey, look – McMurty's. Wanna get a drink?"

McMurty's was warm after the cold of the street and crowded this early in the evening. Regan took off her coat while Strickland went to the bar.

Although she'd wanted a drink when she'd spotted the bar sign, the first sip of tequila turned Regan's stomach. She pushed the glass away and saw Strickland look at her with concern. Before he could say anything she grabbed his hand.

"Wanna dance?" she asked.

The music was jazz, which Regan didn't usually like but which was suitable to this kind of classy establishment. She and Strickland weren't the only couple dancing, but in Regan's opinion Ben Strickland certainly the best looking and the best dancer of all the guys there. He pulled her close and Regan put her arms around his neck and let him lead. As they swayed slowly to the music she let herself forget how awkward she'd felt over dinner. Strickland's fingers rubbed a small circle on her hip and Regan sighed and put her head down on his shoulder. She'd known when Strickland had called her just what his agenda would be – and she hadn't been entirely sure she shared it. He'd asked her out and she'd accepted almost as a challenge to herself.  _Don't screw up maybe a good thing_.  _Don't be an idiot. Time to get over your hang-ups, long past time._

Here in Strickland's arms, Regan thought she might just share Strickland's agenda. His hand moved lower, his other hand running up and down her spine. Regan ran her fingers through the close-cropped hair at the nape of his neck and leaned into him.

After a few more moments Regan realised Strickland had steered them to the edge of the tiny dance floor, into the shadows behind the jukebox. He moved her up against the wall and put his fingers under her chin to tilt her head for a kiss. Regan let him, let him open her lips with his tongue and explore her mouth. She tried not to compare his touch to Robbie's.  _That's unfair_. Strickland didn't know her very well. He was doing a pretty good job, considering.  _Mmmm_ …

Then she felt his fingers tug her shirt free from her waistband and creep beneath it. His fingers brushed her skin and Regan felt as if somebody had yanked on the handbrake while she was doing a hundred miles an hour.

"Hang on," she said, or tried to with Strickland kissing her. She pushed at his shoulders and turned her face away.

"What's the matter?" Strickland asked. His hand was still warm on her waist. Regan was excruciatingly aware that if he moved it an inch in either direction he'd find scar tissue and the possibility struck her with panic. Regan tried to move him away from her without pushing him too hard. Strickland didn't take the hint. He leaned close to her, lips brushing her cheek, and whispered: "It's okay, honey, we don't have to go – "

"I know, I – just – " Regan didn't want to be rude to him.  _You can't say I didn't lead him on._ "I'm sorry – just – " She managed to get her arms in between them but didn't want to just shove him. Another few seconds and she wouldn't be able to help herself.  _Stop it, stop it, stop it!_  she thought, not sure if she meant it for Strickland or herself.  _Stop, stop, stop._

"I thought you were enjoying yourself," Strickland said.

"Yes – I – just – " Regan couldn't get enough breath to explain herself.

Suddenly a hand landed on Strickland's shoulder and dragged him backwards. Regan blinked and gasped and saw –

_God help me Jack McCoy_

– pushing Strickland away from her. Strickland caught his balance and McCoy put a hand on his chest before he could step forward. "Learn to take no for an answer," McCoy said harshly.

" Jack, it's okay," Regan said, her pounding pulse slowing a little. McCoy didn't let go of Strickland and he didn't look away from the younger man either. Regan took a step forward, meaning to get in between them but her knees were trembling and she had to brace herself with her hand on the wall. " Jack – "

"It'll be okay when Romeo here heads for home," McCoy said.

"Mr McCoy, with all due respect – " Strickland said.

"A little late for due respect," McCoy said tightly. Strickland tried to take a step forward and McCoy tightened his grip on Strickland's jacket. "Walk away, Mr Strickland."

"It's Detective," Strickland said, but he took a step backwards as he said it. "Detective Strickland."

"For the moment," McCoy said, and neither Regan nor Strickland could miss the threat.

" Jack!" Regan cried.

Strickland put his hands up in surrender. "I'm going. I'm going."

McCoy watched him all the way to the door and then turned to Regan. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm okay," she snapped. "I was okay before your attack of misplaced chivalry and I'm still okay." She took a step towards the table where she'd left her coat and purse and realised how shaky her knees still were.

McCoy steadied her. "Yeah, you're completely okay," he said.

Regan pulled her arm free. "Excuse me." She turned away from him and headed into the Ladies.

Splashing water on her face made her feel better although it was the final death blow to her efforts to disguise the marks Edward Walters had left on her face. Regan studied herself in the mirror for a moment. The harsh fluorescent lighting didn't do her any favours.  _It was a minor miracle that Strickland asked me out in the first place_. She didn't have any illusions there'd be a repeat. No doubt she'd given him the impression she was some kind of neurotic mess.  _And god knows what impression Jack_   _McCoy's given him._

Regan sighed. She tucked in her shirt and made a futile effort to smooth down her hair. She'd neatened it up after the ER nurses had cut Walters's electrical tape out of it but it was still a disaster.  _Matches my face. And my romantic future._

When she left the washroom she nearly walked straight into Jack McCoy leaning against the wall.

"You're  _stalking_ me now?" she asked.

"Not up until five minutes ago," McCoy said. "This is my local, remember?"

"Yeah," Regan said, realising that she  _had_  remembered when she'd seen the sign. "Sorry." She pushed past him and started towards her table to get her coat and purse.

"Hey," McCoy said, and when Regan turned he held her coat and bag out towards her.

"Thanks," Regan said.

"You're welcome," McCoy said a little acerbically.

"What, you also want thanks for saddling up your white horse when I'm making out with my boyfriend?" Regan snapped.

"If it'd looked like you were making out with your boyfriend I would have left the white horse in the stable," McCoy shot back.

Regan shook her head. "I appreciate the concern but it's none of your business." She started pulling on her coat, winced as the movement pulled at sore muscles in her side and tried again.

McCoy grabbed the coat from her hands and held it for her. "For chrissakes, Regan, you and I  _both_  know that 'no means no' is  _everybody's_  business."

"That's not what happened," Regan said. She would have liked to have stormed out but she had to let McCoy help her on with her coat. The minute her arms were in the sleeves she pulled away. "That's not what happened."

"So what happened?" McCoy asked. Regan started for the door, buttoning her coat, and McCoy followed her. "Because you didn't look like you were having a good time there."

When she realised McCoy had followed her out to the street, pulling on his own coat, Regan knew she was going to have to do more than evade his questions. "Look, I – "

_I can't possibly tell him._

"Look," she started again, holding his gaze to make him believe she was being entirely honest. "I just – for a minute I felt like it was – Edward Walters touching me. I freaked out. It wasn't Ben's fault. It was mine. Okay?" She saw a cab up the street and held up her hand to flag it down.

McCoy opened the cab door for her, and when she'd gotten in he held it open and leaned down. "There's two things wrong with that story."

"Lady," the cabbie said. "Do you want to go somewhere?"

"She will in a minute," McCoy told him.

"Close the door and I will now," Regan said.

"Two things," McCoy said. "First of all, I counted to twenty five before I put my drink down. I don't care what the hell was going through your mind, that's at least ten seconds longer than 'your boyfriend' should have been trying to change it."

"And the second thing?" Regan asked.

"Don't lie to me," he snapped. "I'll always know. And it pisses me off!"

He slammed the cab door on her and slapped the roof. The driver took off before Regan could frame a response.


	2. Just Keep The Caddy Moving

 

* * *

_10th Floor_

_One Hogan Place_

_11.45 am Friday 1 December 2006_

* * *

 

Regan did her best to avoid Jack McCoy the next morning but when she got back from arraigning that morning's crop of felons she couldn't put it off. She took a deep breath, picked up her files and went to knock on his door.

"Hey," McCoy said. "You're here for Skoda?"

"No," Regan said. "Got today's arraignments."

"Anything I need to know?" McCoy asked.

"Pled a couple, bailed a couple, remanded three," Regan said. "I think the Whitford murder is going to be a thing. The others, not so much."

"Got the file on Whitford?"

"Right here," Regan said, holding it out.

"I'll read it over the weekend, we'll talk Monday."

"Okay," Regan said. She turned to the door, turned back. "So you still want me to sit in with Dr Skoda?"

"Sure," McCoy said, seeming surprised.

"Okay," Regan said.  _So he's going to act as if yesterday evening never happened? If only I had a magic wand to make Ben_   _Strickland do the same._

"It's a lunch," McCoy added. "I'll grab you on the way out."

Regan had talked to Emil Skoda on the phone but she hadn't met him before and her mind had built an image of an old man with a beard and a pipe. When he arrived at the restaurant she realised that she'd been imagining Sigmund Freud. Emil Skoda, balding, sparely built, self-contained, had nothing in common with her mental image except for his watchful, penetrating gaze.

She sat quietly and picked at her risotto while Skoda and McCoy tried to find a point of commonality over Timmy McMillan.

"So you're telling me I should give Timmy McMillan a pass because – "

"Not a  _pass_ , Jack. But you've met this boy. He's what we mental health professionals like to call 'dumb as a box of hammers'." Skoda shrugged. "He went along with the other two – and partly because he was scared of them."

"And partly because he wanted to  _emulate_ them," McCoy said.

"True," Skoda conceded. "All three of them have a pretty screwed up idea of masculinity. McMillan wanted to be a 'real man' like his two psychopathic friends. But I don't have any doubt that he had second thoughts."

"Second thoughts –  _before_ or  _after_ he forced Louise Yates to perform a sex act on him?"

"He says before  _Braxton and Lewis_ forced Louise Yates to – "

"Oh, come on!" McCoy said. "Don't tell me you buy that crap!"

"They were armed, Jack," Regan weighed in. "He wasn't."

"Defence of necessity?" McCoy said. " Adler's not running that one. And he would if it would fly – which means the constraint on McMillan can't have been all that goddamn strong."

"Strong enough to mitigate," Regan said.

" Adler wants an acquittal." McCoy put his cutlery down on his empty plate. "And we can't afford one."

"You mean, Arthur Branch can't afford one," Skoda said.

Regan pushed her risotto around a little more and looked up to see Skoda watching her. She put her fork down. "Excuse me," she said, and headed for the washroom, feeling like a kid caught hiding her brussell sprouts under the lettuce.

She gave them five minutes.  _Jack's finished his steak – Skoda didn't have much left on his plate – that should do it._  As she approached the table she could see she was right – both men had finished their meals.

"What do you want me to say, Jack?" Skoda was saying as Regan came closer. "This is hardly a therapeutic setting."

"Just give me your read, Emil," McCoy said. "Should I worry? Should I bench her for a while?"

About to answer, Skoda looked up and saw Regan. His pause told her everything she needed to know; the expression on McCoy's face when he turned just confirmed it.

"I'm going to head back to the office," Regan said stiffly. "I'm sure you gentlemen would be more comfortable discussing me behind my back, behind my back."

"Regan – " McCoy said.

Regan shook her head and walked away.

She walked all the way back to One Hogan Place – something she regretted as she trudged across the lobby. Her pumps weren't walking shoes, for one thing – and for another, she was plenty stiff and sore enough without a hike. In her office, she closed the door behind her and cautiously lowered herself into her chair.  _Should I bench her for a while?_  McCoy had all but benched her already, Regan thought as she looked at her almost-empty desk.

She sighed and flinched as the incautious deep breath pulled at sore muscles in her side.  _Maybe he's right. Maybe I should be on the bench._ The thought of sitting at home with nothing to do filled Regan with panic but the effort of getting through the week had exhausted her. She rested her elbows on her desk and leant her head on her hands.  _Close my eyes for a second._

"Hey," McCoy said behind her. Regan started, then hissed in pain as the movement pulled aching muscles. "You okay?"

"Is that what Dr Skoda says?" Regan asked, not looking at him.

"I asked Emil – "

"You know what, forget it," Regan said tightly. "If Dr Skoda has something to tell me I'm sure the switch downstairs won't have any trouble putting him through. Are you looking for the Whitford file?"

"You already gave that to me," McCoy reminded her.

"Okay," Regan said. "Then?"

McCoy leaned against her doorframe, hands in his pockets. "What did you think of what he said about Timmy McMillan?"

"I agree with him," Regan said. "That's why I told you to take the meeting."

"And what do you expect me to do about it?" McCoy asked.

"Whatever the hell you want, Jack!" Regan snapped, and then put her hand over her mouth.

McCoy looked sideways at her, not the angry glare she'd expected but a steady, assessing stare. " Skoda says McMillan is either a talented liar or as sharp as a sack of wet mice, and there's no way to tell which based on the kind of access Adler is going to give us. He thinks we need to dig into his background a little."

"I'll get – who caught this? Briscoe and Green?" Regan reached for her phone. "I'll get them to dig around – "

McCoy took a step forward and took the receiver out of her hand. "That might be a problem. Timmy McMillan is a recent immigrant to our city."

"From where?" Regan asked.

"Upstate." McCoy said. He hung up Regan's phone and sank into her visitor's chair. "Small town, about six hours away."

"Can we reach out to the locals?" Regan asked.

"I have a better idea," McCoy said. "Feel like a road trip?"

"A road trip?" Regan repeated.

"Over the weekend," McCoy said, and shrugged. "Check out a pool car. See the sights. Ask a few questions."

"You want me to spend the weekend driving up there and back?" Regan asked.

"It's scenic. Almost like a holiday," McCoy said.

"Yeah, except nothing like a holiday," Regan said.

"Oh, come on. It's pretty country up there."

"It's  _December_."

"By one day," McCoy countered. "And besides, I've always wanted to go to Carthage."

" Carthage?" Regan said.  _And again with the moronic repetition._

"That's where he comes from. Carthage." McCoy grinned at her, so self-evidently pleased with himself that Regan couldn't help smiling back. " Colleen can book some motel rooms. We can drive up tonight and start asking questions first thing in the morning."

"We – You want to – sorry, you're coming?"

"You thought I'd send you on your own?"

"Half an hour ago I didn't think the topless towers of Ilium were on either of our weekend agendas."

"Wrong classical civilisation," McCoy said. "But points for effort." He leaned back in his chair, one long leg propped against her bookshelf and gave her the patented charming SOB Jack McCoy smile.

Regan found herself nodding as she smiled back. "All right," she said. "Let's go to Carthage."

"Better go home," McCoy said. "Pack a toothbrush." He got to his feet and patted her on the shoulder. "My office at five. We'll check out a car and hit the road."


	3. Small Mysteries Slowly Unfold

_US 1-9_

_5.45 pm Friday 1st December 2006_

* * *

 

"You sure you don't want me to drive?" Regan asked.

"Maybe in a while," McCoy said, giving her a quick glance before turning his attention back to the road. Even from that brief glimpse of her face stippled by the headlights of oncoming cars McCoy could see how tired she was. "Why don't you catch a nap – you can spell me later. Maybe at Moscow. Or Rome."

Regan snorted. "Didn't you guys have any imagination at  _all_?"

"I'm from Chicago," McCoy said. "Take it up with the locals."

Regan laughed. "What other international capitals can we visit without leaving New York State?" she asked, cranking her seat back.

" Bethlehem," McCoy said. " Jerusalem."

" _There's_ a solution to Middle East Peace no-one's proposed," Regan said. McCoy stole another glance at her and saw her eyes were closed.

" Amsterdam, Geneva, Lyons …" McCoy elaborated.

"It's like a world tour," Regan murmured. She yawned. "Without actually being a world … " Her voice trailed away.

After a few minutes McCoy said her name softly.

Regan didn't stir.

She slept right through New Jersey and well into Pennsylvania, as the cityscape thinned and then became towns sparsely scattered along the highway. She was still sleeping three hours later when McCoy pulled off I-80 for gas, but when he came back to the car after paying Regan was standing by the driver's side, stamping her feet against the cold. "Keys," she said, holding out her hand.

"I'm fine," McCoy said. "If you – "

"Also fine. Keys." Regan snapped her fingers. "Before we both freeze."

McCoy surrendered them and got in the passenger side.

Regan pulled back onto the highway. She drove confidently and smoothly, sending the car weaving in and out of the traffic, light at this time of night.

"Easy to tell you don't come from Manhattan," McCoy said after a few miles.

"State highway patrol," Regan said. "Three years, driving these kinds of roads – and a lot worse – all day every day."

"I thought you were from Seattle PD."

"It was a detour," Regan said.

"Really?" McCoy said, turning to look at her. When she'd been dozing in the passenger seat, he'd only been able to see the left, relatively unmarked, side of her face. Now their positions were reversed and McCoy could only see bruises and abrasions. She looked ghastly, and McCoy lost his train of thought.

He'd read the police file.  _After all, Regan herself asked me to keep an eye on the investigation into the shooting, to make sure Anita_   _Van Buren came through it all right_. But having read the file, he couldn't erase the memory of the medical reports.  _Serious contusions consistent with kicking …cracked ribs …bruise to the femur_.

Regan had brought herself back to work and McCoy had respected her decision.  _Regan is doing fine. She's on the mend. She's holding up._

She hadn't been doing fine in McMurty's the previous night. McCoy didn't know why she'd lied to him but he'd seen the tell-tale shift in her eyes and known she was hiding something. Whatever it was she wasn't willing to tell him had put an expression of stark panic on her face as she tried to push Strickland away from her. And however angry she'd been with McCoy, her knees had almost buckled when she'd tried to walk away from him.

_Lots of possible explanations, Jack_ , Emil Skoda had said.  _And she described classic PTSD symptoms to you. Are you so sure she was lying?_

_And are you so sure it's any of your business?_

McCoy studied Regan's battered face in the dashboard glow.  _Arthur made it my business with that comment about her coming unglued in the middle of the McMillan trial. I have to either bench her or be sure of her._

He realised how long he'd been silent, just looking at her, and cleared his throat. "You didn't strike me as a detour kind of person."

"There were other considerations," Regan said.

"What does that mean?" McCoy asked. "'Other considerations'?"

Regan gave a self-conscious little laugh. "They have a policy, Seattle PD, about – I guess you could call it – fraternisation. And I met this guy at the PBA picnic, and he transferred into my house, and I had to make a decision." She downshifted for a hill. "So I put in for highway."

"Was he worth it?" McCoy asked.

"As it turned out, highway was worth it," Regan said. "I got bumped a grade when Robbie took a transfer and I came back to the city. Is that the turn?"

McCoy pulled the map Colleen had given him out of the glove-box. "Yes."

They were driving through empty winter fields now, the headlights of the car making a tunnel of brightness in the night. Regan slowed a little as the road took a few sharp bends. "I presume, city-bred lawyer that you are, you had the good sense to get us a car with snow tires?"

" Colleen did," McCoy said. "So, when you transferred back – "

"Do you want to talk about Timmy McMillan?" Regan interrupted. "Or maybe the Whitford case?"

McCoy accepted the change of topic. " Arthur's going to get taken out to the woodshed by the voters if he can't deliver on the maximum for McMillan."

"Is that the main concern of the office of the District Attorney of Manhattan?" Regan asked. "Politics?"

"As a general rule, the main concern of whoever holds the office of District Attorney of Manhattan is not getting kicked out of said office at the next election, yes," McCoy said.

"And you work for Arthur Branch."

"We  _both_  work for Arthur Branch."

"That's funny because that's not what it says on my badge," Regan snapped. McCoy saw that her hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel and her grazed jaw was set. She drove in silence for a moment and then cleared her throat. "Sorry. I just meant – we're officers of the  _court_. We took an oath. To forge justice out of the operation of the law."

"I forget how young you are," McCoy said.

"I'm not that young," Regan said. "And patronising me doesn't prove the strength of your argument."

"I just mean that with more experience, you'll understand that it's an imperfect system, and we have to do our best with that," McCoy said.

Regan snorted. "There's  _an imperfect system_  and there's measuring a kid for a noose because a politician needs to bank some law and order credits for the campaign trail."

"It's what DAs do," McCoy said.

"It doesn't bother you?"

"It's not what  _I_ do."

"I thought we both worked for Arthur Branch," Regan countered.

"I've worked for a lot of DAs," McCoy said.

"Oh, for – all right. Be goddamn inscrutable," Regan snapped.

McCoy turned a little in his seat. "Look. Arthur wants this asshole cemented into his cell. Personally, I don't see any legal or moral reason to argue with him." He thumped the dashboard with one fist, voice rising. "But you seem to have some kind of bee in your bonnet over this one, and Emil is at least tending towards your point of view, so here we are driving to Carthage to find out if Timmy McMillan is a bad kid in worse company or a pint-sized Son of Sam in the making. Turn right here."

She made the turn and drove in silence for a little while. "That makes sense."

"You think?" McCoy said, still pissed.

"You could have just told me that."

"I  _did_  just tell you that. Yesterday, and twice today."

"Right," Regan said. She took a breath and blew it out, and then pulled the car over to the side of the road. She put on the handbrake and killed the ignition.

"Regan?"

"Yeah, just a minute." She got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. McCoy watched her walk around to the back of the car, footsteps crunching through the frozen mud. After standing for a minute or so with her back to the car and her arms tightly folded, Regan came back and got in again, shivering. She sat with her hands on the steering wheel for a moment, staring ahead into the dark, and then turned in the driver's seat to face McCoy. "When we get back to Hogan Place, I think you should bench me."

McCoy studied her. "You came back to work pretty quickly. If you need more time – "

"I'm not saying I need more time," Regan interrupted. "I'm just not sure I'm doing you any good on this case." She faced forward again and started the car. "Bring in someone like Christine Danielson from Homicide."

"First of all, it's not often a Bureau Chief is happy to second chair," McCoy said. "Secondly,  _I'll_ tell  _you_ when you're not doing me any good on a case. And  _I'll_ make the decision on who sits next to me on which trials. Okay?"

"Okay," Regan said, pulling the car back onto the highway. After a minute she asked, "I presume Colleen gave you the address of the motel?"

"And a map."

"Lucky we have Colleen," Regan said dryly.

Colleen's map proved accurate. She'd made reservations for them at a Lowville motel fifteen miles short of Carthage. The check-in desk closed at ten but Colleen was nothing if not resourceful. When Regan pulled into the car park just short of midnight, there was a dark blue car with 'State Trooper' in yellow on the side already there. The driver's door opened as Regan parked, and a very tall young man in a grey uniform got out and came towards them.

"Be polite," McCoy said to Regan. "We need co-operation from the locals."

"Ya think?" Regan said. She reached into the backseat for her coat at the same moment as McCoy did and they collided. "Sorry," Regan said hastily, leaning back. McCoy grabbed both coats and tossed Regan's in her lap.

"Good evening, sir, ma'am," the state trooper said as they got out of the car, his breath steaming in the air. McCoy thought he looked to be all of sixteen years old. "Ah, the Manhattan DA's Office, um called, and said you'd be arriving late tonight and so our DA called my captain and he sent me out here to pick up the keys for you both, and – "

"And we really appreciate it, Trooper…?" Regan said, cutting him off.

"Trooper Harris, ma'am." Harris shook the hand Regan stuck out. "And it's an honour to help the Manhattan District Attorney's office on an investigation, ma'am, you know, I read all about the city, I get the  _New York Post_  up here, it's a few days late but I – "

"That is amazing," Regan said, her teeth chattering a little. The night was frigid. McCoy got their bags out of the trunk in the hope that Trooper Harris would take the hint.

Trooper Harris didn't seem the hint-taking type. He started telling Regan and McCoy at great length about his ambitions to join the BCI as a step on the way to NYPD. Somehow, while listening intently and making appreciative noises, Regan managed to get their room keys from him and give one to McCoy. McCoy led the way to the row of rooms, Harris following them, trying to trade war stories with Regan on the assumption that her injuries came from 'taking down some bad ass bad guy, am I right, ma'am?' Regan took her bag from McCoy and gave him a discreet shove towards his room, then turned back and kept talking to Harris.  _Throwing herself on the grenade,_ McCoy thought, feeling guilty, but nonetheless making his escape into the warmth of his motel room.

For a couple of minutes he could hear Harris's voice, and then he heard a door opening and closing. After about fifteen minutes he realised he hadn't heard a car engine. Looking out the window, he could see the State Trooper's car still parked.

He picked up his cell phone and dialled Regan's number. When she answered, he asked: "Trooper Harris?"

"Did you need to speak to him?" Regan asked.

"He's still there?" McCoy asked.

"Yes," Regan said, her tone so carefully neutral McCoy had to work hard to suppress a chuckle.

"When I said be polite, I didn't mean 'invite local law enforcement to stay the night'," he said.

"I think that's a significant misrepresentation, Mr McCoy," Regan said.

"Need a knight on a white horse?" McCoy asked.

"I can bring those files to you right away, Mr McCoy," Regan said calmly.

McCoy laughed out loud, and hung up.

Seconds later he heard Regan's door open and close again. "Goodnight, Trooper," she called, and he heard her heels tapping along the walkway towards his door.

McCoy opened the door before she knocked. Regan, her arms full of files, stepped quickly through the door. She rolled her eyes at McCoy as he shut it behind her.

"Could you really – " he started to say, and Regan held her finger to her lips. They stood in silence for a moment until the sound of a car starting came from the car park.

"Oh thank god," Regan said fervently. "That was possibly the longest quarter hour of my life."

"You really couldn't get rid of him?" McCoy asked.

"In about two minutes I would have resorted to setting fire to the room," Regan said. "Thanks for bailing me out." She turned to the door, and paused with her hand on the doorknob. " Harris is going to meet us tomorrow at the State Police office in Carthage. He'll take us through the files on Timmy McMillan and his family."

"Great," McCoy said. "What time?"

"Eight," Regan said. "We'll need to leave by seven thirty."

"I'll be ready," McCoy said. Regan opened the door, and McCoy said: "Fancy a nightcap?"

"At mini-bar prices?" Regan asked incredulously. "They're paying you too much."

"Don't tell Arthur," McCoy said.

"I am as silent as the grave," Regan assured him, winked with her un-blackened eye, and closed the door firmly behind her.

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	4. Are They Forever Lost?

_Carthage PD_

_8.15 am Saturday 2 December 2006_

* * *

 

"So what you're telling us, Trooper, is that McMillans have a long history of problems with law enforcement?" McCoy said. He leafed through the stack of files in front of him. Regan studied her hands folded in her lap, not wanting to catch an I-told-you-so smirk on McCoy's face.  _Yeah, yeah,_  she thought.  _The McMillan's are Carthage's answer to trailer trash._

She could have guessed that without leaving the city. She'd seen it on Timmy McMillan, clinging to him like the smell of stale cigarette smoke, the aura of a lifetime loserdom.  _White bread and cheese wiz sandwiches every day of his childhood. Parents who drink – or more. Raised himself, or raised by his older brothers and sisters – which would have been worse, basically about on a par with being raised by wolves._

_Oh, yeah_. Regan knew Timmy McMillan before he even opened his mouth.

"Oh, I'm sure it's nothing by big-city standards," Trooper Harris said. "But around here, if something's smashed up or stole or you know, there's some kind of trouble, it's usually the McMillans at the bottom of it."

_Know that story too,_  Regan thought.  _Police turning up at the door, time after time. Whatever's been done, round up the usual suspects – the white-trash, low-rent, welfare-sucking usual suspects._

Her stomach tightened with acid.  _Black coffee breakfast. Should have added a Mylanta chaser._

"Looks like just about every member of this family has done some time, at one point or another," McCoy said.

"Oh, yeah," Harris said. " Timmy was no exception. He did three months in juvenile hall for stealing a car and smashing it up, then he got some more time when he got caught with marijuana in phys ed, then there was the shoplifting – "

"Just back up a little," Regan said, looking up from her hands. "He went inside for being busted with weed in gym class? What kind of judges do you guys get up here?"

"And what kind of gym teachers?" McCoy asked with a grin.

Harris shook his head. "He was busted with three kilos in his sports bag. He was dealing."

"In gym class. Sounds like a  _model_  citizen," McCoy said with a sidelong glance at Regan.

"History of violence?" Regan asked. "In Tim McMillan? Or his family?"

"Sure," Harris said, and shrugged. "Usual stuff. Like, for example, one time his older brother Dave and a couple of friends started arguing in the store over who owed who a pack of cigarettes. Arguing became shoving, someone threw a punch. Timmy came to his brother's rescue, all four of them ended up in hospital and the store was pretty well trashed."

Regan avoided catching McCoy's eye. He'd made it clear he was humouring her with this half-assed investigation into Timmy McMillan's past from the beginning: now, after a six hour drive, a fifteen minute conversation they could have done on the phone had made it clear it was a wild goose chase. She spoke to Harris instead. "So you've heard about the charges down in New York City?"

"That poor girl? I have." Harris shook his head. "It's a terrible world out there. I suppose if anyone from Carthage were going to get mixed up in something like that, it would be one of the McMillans. They just start out wrong and get worse."

"Because of their family … " Regan said.

"Good fruit can't grow in bad soil," Harris said.

"We're not all destined to turn into our parents," McCoy said, seconds before Regan could express similar sentiments. She was surprised – by the words, and by the harshness of his voice. She turned to look at him and saw him staring Trooper Harris down with something like defiance.

"No, sir, Mr McCoy," Harris said placatingly. "I just mean, it does seem sometimes with that family that we'd save time taking them straight from the birth ward to juvenile hall. Still, we never had nothing around here like they did to that poor girl. Just goes to show, you never do know."

McCoy looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I never would have said Timmy McMillan could do something like that. He's never been any good, for sure, but what they did to that girl … he's not some kind of psycho killer. Or I would have said that he wasn't." Harris shrugged. "Like I said, you never can tell."

McCoy looked down at the files in front of him, and flipped them shut. "Maybe we should talk to some of the people around here who knew him." Regan had been ready for him to thank Harris and suggest they head back to the city and she turned in her seat in surprise. McCoy shrugged. "Since we're up here."

"Yeah," Regan said. She tried to look professional and indifferent but she could feel the smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. "Since we are."

"I can give you a list of names, some addresses. The McMillans live out near the cemetery – "  _Of course they do,_ Regan thought. "And I wouldn't go out there on your own, if I were you. I hafta go and do a couple of things this morning – I'm supposed to be off – but I can meet you later at lunch time, maybe with some of the guys, and take you over there. And most other people you'd want to talk to, they're okay."

"Okay," McCoy said. "Why don't you give us those names, and tell us where and when you want to meet."

Harris started writing. Regan leaned back in the uncomfortable wooden chair, which seemed to have the same collection of splinters and sharp edges that every piece of furniture in every police station accumulated within days of being unpacked. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. She'd slept badly.  _Nothing new_. Her nap in the car had been the deepest, sweetest sleep since they'd closed the Mary Firienze case.

Nothing new, but this past week her grinding fatigue was worse than it had been in years.  _Healing. Healing takes it out of you._

Her bruises – including the bad ones she couldn't remember receiving, the ones on her side and legs in the shape of boot prints – had deepened to indigo and in places were beginning to turn green. The scabs on her face were beginning to flake at the edges. A few more weeks and she'd be good as new, or close to.  _Or as close to good as new as I can aspire to be, these days_.

The wave of self-pity that washed over her brought tears to Regan's eyes.

Just as she knew her exhaustion was the physiological aftermath of the damage Walters had done, Regan knew her easy tears were nothing more than an emotional response to her body's trauma.  _Meaningless. Just a physical reflex._ She hunched away from McCoy and wiped them away quickly.  _It all takes time. Nothing but time_.

_Time._ Time had smoothed some of the rough edges away from Seattle, had left her able to say  _I used to be a cop. Yeah, I got shot. There was this guy, so I transferred to highway._  Time would do the same with what had happened last week, until she could say  _Yeah, there was this guy who jumped me, tied me up._

Except the problem was that as Regan had strangled slowly in the alley, the time between  _then_ and  _now_ , between  _Seattle_  and  _New York_ , had disappeared, and now the smooth edges were jagged and Regan's nightmares came when she was wide awake.

"I drew maps," Harris said, and Regan opened her eyes to see his handing his list of names and addresses to McCoy. "Some of those places are hard to find."

"That's great," McCoy told him. "Now, is there somewhere near here that does a good breakfast?"

"Sunny's Diner, on the corner two blocks down," Harris said. "Show your badge and Lorraine will give you a discount."

"You hungry?" McCoy asked Regan.

"I'm okay," she said.

"Well," McCoy, "I'm starved. Come on." He stood up and held out his hand to Regan. For a second, she looked blankly at it, trying to work out what he wanted her to give him, and then she realised.  _My hand. He wants me to give him my hand_.

She let him pull her to her feet. When her cramped legs wouldn't support her immediately, McCoy put his hand under her elbow to steady her, taking her weight easily. Regan leaned on him for a moment, the feel of his strong grip subtly reassuring. She looked up at him, expecting a sarcastic remark, but McCoy's eyes held only patience.

"Some food might do both of us good," he said quietly.

"Okay," Regan said. Her knees steadied, but she didn't hurry to pull away. "Okay, Sunny's Diner it is."

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	5. That Horizon Seems To Inch Just That Much Nearer

_Sunny's Diner_

_Carthage_

_9.10 am Saturday 2 December 2006_

* * *

 

"We had one of those families in my street when I was growing up," Regan said. She pushed her scrambled eggs around on her plate. "Dad drank, mom doped. Kids ran wild. Whenever anything happened – whatever it was, a house got broke into, a car was stolen, whatever – the police would basically 'round up the usual suspects'." She paused. "Round up the usual Reagans." She shrugged, picked up her toast and put it down again. "Apples fall close by the tree, right? Those kids, they were always going to go to the bad."

"Like Timmy McMillan," McCoy said. His plate was empty and he moved it aside.

"Like Timmy McMillan. Except, Jack, those Reagan boys – " she paused a long moment, turning her fork over in her fingers. "Getting drunk and stealing cars, buying and selling ganja because it's easier than working, getting into fights – all of that, sure. But I just can't imagine – I just can't believe they could do what Braxton and Lewis did. So I look at Timmy McMillan, and I think – "

"You think he's like those boys you knew growing up," McCoy said.

"Bad. But a monster?"

"It happens," McCoy said. "Sometimes these guys just need a little push. The wrong company, the wrong movie … who knows?"

"Yeah," Regan said.

"You all okay there?" Lorraine, a big woman with teased brown hair, refilled their coffee cups and picked up McCoy's plate. "Can I get you anything?"

"We're fine," Regan said. She might as well have saved her breath as Lorraine smiled down at McCoy.

"So you must be those Manhattan DAs in town looking into the McMillan boy," Lorraine said. She put her hand on her ample hip and would have tossed her hair if it hadn't been lacquered to immobility.

"We are," McCoy said, returning her smile. "Did you know him?"

"Everybody around here knows the McMillans," Lorraine said. "Everybody around here knows everybody, when you get right down to it. Timmy – it's Timmy you got locked up down there, right? Well, he's the youngest. Used to come in here until I had to ban him."

"Ban him why?" McCoy asked.

"Smoking that stuff here in the diner, badmouthing me, using the kind of language that the other patrons don't want to hear – even on Sundays," Lorraine said. "Banned all those boys. Timmy and his brother Dave, the middle boy Larry, their cousins – not one of them is welcome in here. Therese still comes in here sometimes, Timmy's sister? But she's real busy now with their parents. They're not really fit to be left on their own these days." Then, to Regan, "You going to finish those eggs, honey?"

"No, I – " Regan pushed her plate away and McCoy instantly pushed it back.

"She's fine," he told Lorraine. "So tell me more about the McMillan boys. I hear they get into a lot of trouble?"

Regan forced down another mouthful of eggs as Lorraine started in on a catalogue of McMillan misdeeds. She was sure the food in the diner lived up the Harris's recommendation: McCoy had made short work of his own breakfast. But everything Regan ate these days tasted of ashes. She pushed the plate away again and again McCoy moved it back in front of her. Regan would have been annoyed with him but it was exactly what Marco would have done. She nibbled on her toast and listened to stories of stolen cars and moonshine, bar brawls and knife fights.

When Lorraine finally ran out of McMillan stories she refilled McCoy's coffee cup again and sashayed away.

"I think she likes you, Jack," Regan teased. "You should get her number."

"She's not my type," McCoy said.

"Oh, no, you like red-headed prosecutors who wear Shalimar," Regan said without thinking, lulled by her exhaustion, by the informal setting, into the easy back-and-forth she was used to from the front seat of a patrol car. The look McCoy gave her could have frozen her hot coffee. "Sorry," Regan said hastily. "Not my business."

"No," McCoy said flatly. After a moment, he added, "And in case the topic comes up at the water cooler, not  _anybody else's_ business either – and  _over_."

"Absolutely," Regan said instantly. She stared down at her eggs, now cold and rubbery, for a long moment of frosty silence.

"Seattle PD isn't the only workplace that frowns on fraternisation," McCoy said after a while, his tone more conversational.

"Totally understood," Regan said.

Another pause, and then McCoy asked: "How did you know?"

"You left right after her, that night," Regan said. "And at the hospital, I could smell her perfume."

"You're sure you never got your gold shield in Seattle?" McCoy asked. Regan risked a look at him and was reassured to see he wasn't scowling.

Still, no point pushing her luck. "Have you worked out who you want to see first on that list from Harris?"

"The school teacher." McCoy took the list from his pocket and unfolded it. "There's also the parent of a school friend of Timmy McMillan's, and the mechanic who gave him a part-time job for a while. But I think the school teacher is closer."

"Then let's go." Regan turned in her chair and signalled to Lorraine for the bill.

She sauntered over and put it down on the table, picking up Regan's plate as she did so. "Something wrong with your breakfast, honey?"

"Nothing," Regan assured her. She reached for the bill but McCoy was faster.

"Oh, so you're watching your figure, are you, honey?" Lorraine looked her up and down. "Take it from me, you don't want to do too much of that dieting. Men don't like a bony girl like you."

"I'll remember," Regan said. She glanced at McCoy and was almost sure he was suppressing a smile.

"And you could stand to do a little something with your hair." Lorraine studied her, head on one side. "Your face – is that one of those chemical peel things?"

"No," Regan said. McCoy was taking his time finding the right money for the bill. "I got – "  _hand knotted in her hair and she's swung face first into the bricks all his weight on her face and she kicks back but –_ "I got mugged."

"Oh," Lorraine said. "Oh, well. A little bit of concealer and you wouldn't notice it, honey, not one bit."

"Thanks," Regan said. She grabbed her coat from the seat beside her and stood up. "I'll meet you at the car, Jack."

It was freezing outside and Regan was shivering in seconds, even with her coat, but nothing could have induced her to go back into Sunny's Diner. When Jack emerged, Regan held out her hand for the keys. "I'll drive," she said. "You read the maps."

"You trust my city-bred sense of direction?"

"Man can find his way around New York City, I'll put myself in his hands," Regan said. "Besides, I like driving."

She settled herself in the driver's seat and waited for McCoy to compare the map Harris had drawn them with the road map of the area. " Ms Aitcheson, the schoolteacher, is left from here," he said at last. "Then the first right and keep going."

Regan nodded and pulled out of the car park. The pool car from the DA's Office had less grunt than she would have liked, but then again, she wasn't going to have to slap a bubble on the roof and take off after a speeding fugitive. Even with a little less power in the engine, the open road and the empty countryside soothed something in her, something Regan hadn't even known was wound tight in Manhattan.  _Sky and trees and snow, and the occasional human being a long way away._ Regan felt like she could take a deep breath for the first time in months.

She glanced away from the road to see McCoy watching her. "You like driving?" he asked. "Is that from highway patrol?"

Regan touched the brakes to take a corner, shaking her head. "I've always liked driving. Since I got my licence. I – " She stopped, biting back what she might have said.  _On the road you're alone. On the road you have no history. No family._

"I know what you mean," McCoy said, making Regan wonder if she'd spoken aloud after all. "You're in charge of where you're going, not a passenger. You decide – the route, the destination."

Regan shook her head silently.  _Not what I meant at all._ She never felt in charge behind the wheel – she felt like the car followed the road and bore her onward inexorably, her own willpower subsumed in the car's horsepower.  _No history. No responsibility. Just the white line and the mile markers flicking past._

She couldn't explain any of that to Jack McCoy, but she felt she had to say something.  _Not a passenger_. He'd said something honest to her. Squad car etiquette demanded she say something honest back.

"You know, someday I'd like to – just drive. Take a holiday. Leave the job. Whatever. Buy a red convertible and visit every one of the 48." Regan shrugged a little without taking her hands from the wheel, feeling self-conscious. "One day."

"By yourself?" McCoy asked.

Regan imagined he sounded incredulous. "Sure," she said defensively. "Sure, why not?"

"That's a long way with no-one to share the driving," McCoy said.

"It always is," Regan said. "Isn't it? But we manage. Somehow." She peered ahead. "Is that the turn?"

"Yeah," McCoy said.

Regan slowed down and negotiated the snowy driveway. When she had brought the car to a careful stop outside the schoolteacher's house, she turned to McCoy and found he was still regarding her quizzically.  _We're here._ Something in his gaze stopped the words unsaid.

"A red convertible?" he asked.

Regan felt herself blushing. "I know it's stupid," she mumbled, looking down. "It's just – a dumb idea. That's all. Just a dumb idea." She flung open the car door and got out, buttoning her coat. With her back to the car, she heard McCoy get out as well. "Let's go," she said without turning. "Let's get this fool's errand over with."

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	6. Drinking For the Pleasure Of Falling Down

_Home of Muriel Aitcheson_

_Carthage_   _NY_

* * *

 

"Those boys never would learn thing one, none of them," Muriel Aitcheson said. She shook her head regretfully. "There never was a one of the McMillans, except maybe Therese, who was ever going to make anything of themselves."

"You know Timmy has been charged with a very serious crime down in Manhattan," Regan said. Her tone was respectful without being deferential and completely without emotional colouration.

On the rare occasions when McCoy interviewed witnesses himself, rather than delegating an ADA to do it, he was more than able to cajole, persuade, threaten, intimidate or browbeat a witness into co-operation. Regan made no effort to do any of that with the retired school-teacher. She sat in the old lady's kitchen, drinking the tea Muriel Aitcheson had made them both, exuding a neutrality so deep it was almost indifference.

"I had heard that," Muriel said. "I had heard it. It seems hard to believe, that I taught a boy able to do such things, there in my classroom all those years, well, when he was willing to come, of course."

"You didn't think he was capable of committing that kind of crime?" McCoy asked, picking up on the hesitation.

Muriel looked at him, her faded green eyes shrewd. " Mr McCoy, I'm sure that not many people look at a person they know and think to themselves, there walks a monster in human form. But these crimes are committed, all the same, aren't they? And mostly by people who no-one thought was 'capable'."

McCoy nodded, accepting her point.

"Besides," Muriel said. "I'm sure I'm no expert on such things, but I have heard on the television that a lot of those drugs young people take these days can make even a sane person crazy. And if there's one thing I would have _always_ said about the McMillans, it's that if you can drink it, smoke it, snort it or shoot it in your arm, they'll be first in line.

"What was Timmy like at school?" Regan asked.

" Timmy was two steps behind his brother Dave," Muriel said. "Always. He followed his brother and his brother's friends whatever they did, where-ever they went. Followed Dave down to the city, too."

"Where's Dave now?" Regan asked.

"Sing Sing," Muriel said. "What with that, and Timmy gone, and Jeremy dead last fall, there's no-one out at the McMillan place but the old folk and Therese." She shook her head again. "I had some hope for that girl, once upon a time."

"Tell us about her," Regan suggested.

"Not much to tell, dear." Muriel poured more tea with hands that trembled with age. Regan steadied the teapot for her and Muriel gave her a quick smile. " Therese, she's the eldest of that generation, and I thought she had real promise. She was a smart girl, and she was responsible – grown up for her age, even then. She raised herself, pretty much. Then Jeremy came along, and she was raising him – and then Dave, and Timmy, and pretty much being a parent to her own parents. And …" Muriel's voice trailed away, and she shrugged. "I think about it sometimes. How maybe I should have called child services. Maybe if they'd all been taken away, maybe Therese would have ended up somewhere where she had a chance. But here … cooking and cleaning and trying to get her brothers to go to school, to stay in school, to learn something, to stay out of trouble … How could she do all of that, and her just a child herself, and do well by herself as well?"

"There's no way," Regan said softly.

"And in the end, it didn't make any difference. Her parents are still falling-down drunks in a falling-down house, her brothers have ended up where they always were going to end up, and Therese – well, Jeremy dying was hard, and Dave getting sent away that last time. How she is now, with Timmy, I don't know." Muriel shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. "Such a shame.  _Such_ a shame. She was such a bright little girl. All yellow hair and long legs and a mouthful of smart-ass."

As they thanked Muriel Aitcheson for her time and hospitality and went back to the car, McCoy was almost sure that Regan's eyes were as damp as the schoolteacher's. He held his tongue as she tossed her coat into the back and settled herself in the driver's seat, her movements easy and economical. After giving her directions to their next stop, McCoy waited until they were well on their way before breaking the silence.

"That family you told me about," he said. "Back when you were growing up."

"What about them?" Regan asked.

"You called them – the Roberts boys?" McCoy said, trying to remember the name. "Was there a Roberts girl?"

Regan was silent a long moment, staring ahead at the road unspooling ahead of them. "Yes," she said at last. "There was a Roberts girl."

"Did she end up like Therese McMillan?" McCoy asked.

Regan shook her head. "No," she said. "Worse."

Her tone held a finality that forbade further discussion, an edge McCoy couldn't read, and he let the topic drop. After a moment Regan reached over and punched on the radio, twisting the dial until she found a station. A twangy tenor filled the air, and Regan winced and lowered the volume.

"Would you prefer to drive?" she asked unexpectedly.

"If you're tired – "

"No," Regan said. "I meant – you said you preferred not to be a passenger. If you'd rather be driving … "

"Actually, I'd rather be riding," McCoy said.

Regan shot him a bemused glance. "Horses?"

"Motorcycle," McCoy corrected.

"You ride a motorcycle?" Regan asked. McCoy wasn't sure if he heard incredulity in her voice.

"When I can," he said. "Everyone needs – something to do, outside work. A hobby."

"You might want to look into getting a hobby less likely to turn you into an organ donor," Regan said.

"You might want to look into getting a hobby," McCoy countered.

"Haven't we had this discussion?" Regan said. "You told me drinking counts."

"Was that your hobby in Seattle?" McCoy asked.

"You asking if I was half-in-the-bag when I was on the job, and that's why I got shot?" Regan snapped.

"I'm making conversation, Regan," McCoy lied. "That's something normal people do."

They drove in silence for a while. "Sorry." Regan said at last. "Actually, before I got shot I used to collect stamps."

"Really? That sounds …"

"Boring," Regan said. "And no, not really."

McCoy laughed.

"Do you know," Regan said, as if it were a perfectly normal remark rather than a complete non sequitur, "Your liver grows back if part of it is cut out?" She ran down through the gears for a steep hill and shifted back up as they came over the crest. For a moment McCoy could see quite a distance across the snowy woods, with the road snaking through the dark trees like a river of asphalt. Then they were down into the forest again, the view cut off by thick trees flashing by on either side of the road.

"I had heard that," McCoy said. He stole a sideways glance at Regan as she shuffled on and off the clutch to take a corner, accelerating smoothly into the straight. She drove as if it were not even second, but first nature, the car an extension of her will. It was the same unhurried assurance she'd shown talking to old Muriel Aitcheson, or to Trooper Harris.

Leaving the office, leaving the city, seemed to have done her the world of good. Once again, McCoy marvelled at the difference between Regan Markham, unsure ADA, and who she became when she wasn't trying to fit herself into the DAs Office. He hadn't seen this easy confidence in her since –

_Regan folds the cloth and wipes McCoy's forehead, her touch impersonal despite the intimacy of the act._

She had said to him, on that ragged edge of exhaustion where truths were told as much by accident than design,  _I was **a good cop**. That's all I ever wanted to be. _ Watching her drive, McCoy realised he was seeing the Regan Markham who had been a police officer, and knew she had told him not only what she believed but what was in fact the truth: she had been a good cop, confident in her authority, tender to those in need. Her face in profile was incalculably calm despite the marks left by Edward Walters's battering, her hands on the steering wheel were strong and long-fingered. The rangy build and athletic bearing that made her look like she was in drag in the suits and pumps of a junior lawyer fit when McCoy looked at her and thought 'cop'.

Facing disbarment, McCoy had briefly considered losing the career that he knew he was uniquely suited for, that he loved, that gave him not only a pay-cheque but a kind of moral sustenance: the knowledge that he was doing the kind of good that only he, Jack McCoy, could do. He had known he was tough enough to survive it, if it came to that, but he hadn't known how he could go about it.

As he watched Regan steer the car surely through the snowy landscape, McCoy realised for the first time that her loss was of that magnitude. For Regan, law was a poor second choice.

_And yet, surely, she could have found some way to stay with Seattle PD_ , he thought. He was about to ask her when they rounded a turn and the radio picked up a stronger signal. A woman's smoky voice filled the car, singing something about how anyone who'd ever had a heart wouldn't turn around and break it.

Regan's head turned sharply.

McCoy reached for the volume but Regan gestured to him not to, turning her attention back to the road.

"Leave it," she said softly, barely audible over the singer. "I haven't heard this song in the longest time."

The singer was waiting down on the corner and thinking of ways to get back home. McCoy tried and failed to place the band. Regan flicked a glance in his direction. "Cowboy Junkies," she told him. "Kinda apt, given what we hear about the McMillans."

"And you're a fan?"

_Sweet Jane_ , crooned the Cowboy Junkies.  _Sweet, sweet Jane_

"Used to be. Back west – you know they're from up in Canada. There was this one time, I musta been twenty years old – we heard they were playing a free concert at a radio station in Portland." Regan was smiling a little.

"We?" McCoy asked.

"Me and Robbie. We were – he was my boyfriend at the time. So we decided to drive there. We're on the way and we get a flat," Regan said. "We changed the tyre – it's raining, you know how it gets in the coastal ranges up there, just kind of misting down through those big trees – and then maybe 10 miles further we get a flat in the spare. And you know, that's it. But we got close enough to pick up this local Portland radio station on the car stereo, right? So we spent the night sitting in this car, trying to dry out with the car heater, listening to the Cowboy Junkies playing their concert on this static car radio…" Her voice trailed aware and she shook her head gently. "Best damn night of my life."

McCoy watched her. Regan's eyes were unfocused, looking as much into memory as at the road ahead. Her face was luminous with a tenderness that made her almost beautiful. On the radio, the Cowboy Junkies were calling out to anyone who'd ever been lonely, to anyone who'd ever been split apart.

McCoy let the silence stretch out, and then broke into Regan's reverie. "What happened to Robbie?" he asked.

"How do you know something happened to him?" Regan asked, coming back to the present.

"You're not in Seattle with him, he's not here with you," McCoy said. "What happened?"

"Oh, whatever happens to people," Regan said. "You know. Time passes." There was the same finality to her voice as there had been when he had asked about that family she'd known growing up, the same edge. Hearing it the second time, McCoy identified it: grief.

_What happened to him, to the man whose memory makes you look like that?_

_And what happened to **you** , Regan_  _Markham? What happened to you?_

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	7. If You Offered Me A Point Of View, Would I Dismiss It Saying That It Was Too Black Or White

"So what happened to her?" Regan asked idly as the car ate up the distance.

"To who?" McCoy asked, startled.

"To your – Robbie. Whoever she is. What happened to her?"

For a moment Regan thought McCoy wouldn't answer, that she'd trespassed past an invisible 'Keep Out' sign. She was cursing herself when at last he spoke.

"Well, just take it from me," he said. "If your significant other ever asks you 'What's more important, me or your job', don't preface your answer with 'Well, if you  _must_  know…'"

Regan laughed, spluttered. " _Was_  your job more important than your marriage?"

"It's not a sliding scale. This job – it's non-negotiable. It's part of who I am," McCoy said. He paused again, and Regan thought for a moment he'd finished. "I guess it's different for men," he added as an afterthought.

"Oh, come on!" Regan scoffed. "Are you  _kidding_  me with that Neanderthal crap?"

"Look, years ago, I had an ADA working with me – Jamie Ross," McCoy said. "Her ex-husband gave her a choice when she wanted to remarry – leave the DA's office or face a custody battle for their daughter that she might very well lose … or give up the idea of remarrying."

"He sounds like a real sonofabitch," Regan said.

" Neil Gorton," McCoy said. "Anyway, Jamie left the office. She had to choose between David and Katie, and the job, and she picked David and Katie." McCoy shrugged. "I would have fought for both."

"And lost one," Regan said.

"Maybe," McCoy said.

"How married are you at the moment, Jack?" Regan asked. "There's no  _maybe_  about those choices. We make them. We can pretend they're forced on us, but that's really bullshit."

"You chose your marriage over your job?" McCoy asked.

"I did." Regan said. It was almost entirely true, as far as it went.

"And how married are you at the moment?" McCoy asked acerbically. "My father put in 30 years on the force. I'll put in my thirty in the DA's Office."

"And you think less of me because I didn't put a life-time in the force?" Regan asked, glancing at him.

"I didn't say that," McCoy protested.

"You didn't need to. It's true." Regan said.

"Straight to the heart. Was that a lucky guess?" McCoy asked.

She shrugged awkwardly, eyes on the road.

"No, seriously, Regan, was that a guess?" McCoy pressed.

"No," Regan admitted. "You always make that face when you're feeling –  _disdain_ for someone. You pull your lips in a little, like you've just tasted something bad." When McCoy shook his head, she thought he was denying it. "You probably don't look in the mirror and make it, Jack," she said.

"You're right," he said. "That's a good catch. You need to make those, in our job."

_Our job._  Regan smiled to herself, warmed enough to forget her resentment that he'd judge her harshly for making a decision that was really no choice at all.

The warmth didn't survive the two next interviews.

The mechanic who'd given Timmy McMillan a job for a while and the school-friend's mother gave Regan and McCoy identical portraits of Timmy McMillan – a bad seed from a bad tree. Neither would admit to any surprise that he'd been arrested in New York City – when Regan pressed each of them in turn if they'd ever thought Timmy could have committed  _that_  crime, in  _that_  way, their indifference was palpable. Timmy was a McMillan. Crime was what McMillans did. One crime or another, what did it matter?

Regan crunched through the snow, back to the car. Her feet were beginning to be wet, her cheap boots no match for actual weather. Her coat let in as much cold as it kept out. She hesitated at the driver's door but McCoy showed no sign of wanting to drive, pulling open the passenger-side door without hesitation.

She got in, fired the ignition and turned the heater to full, holding her gloved fingers out to the vent. After a moment she began to feel warm enough to take off her gloves and her coat. It was awkward in the confined space, more so because of the ache in her side, and she was a little breathless when she'd finally managed it.

"Where to now?" she asked McCoy.

"It's almost midday," McCoy pointed out. "We're meeting Harris at the cemetery."

"Right." Regan put the car in gear and pulled out onto the road. She would have liked to go back to the motel, curl up on her bed, and sleep the afternoon away. The last two interviews had taken almost all of her strength, exhausting her with the sheer effort in nodding politely and asking prompting, neutral questions while all the time wanting to scream  _Did you ever **look**  at those kids you're so easily dismissing? Did you ever think that they might be just like  **your**  kids, inside?_

But no. They were the McMillans. The no-good Carthage McMillans. And that was that.

Regan wasn't sure how she was going to get through the afternoon. A blanket of lead lay over her. It took her an almost physical effort to keep her mind focussed on what she needed to do, moment to moment. _Healing. Physiological reaction._

She shook her head sharply, throwing her exhaustion off like she'd throw off a punch in a fight, and realised McCoy was looking at her.

"You alright?" he asked her.

"I've had more restful weekends," Regan told him, mindful of his warning to her not to tell him any lies.

"Do you need me to drive?"

"Maybe later," Regan said. She glanced at the clock on the dash. "We'll be there soon, anyway. The cemetery."

"Why would any family live next to a cemetery?" McCoy asked.

"Because everywhere better turned them out," Regan snapped, far more sharply than she'd intended. She clenched her jaw and stood hard on the accelerator, snapping the car around a series of bends. She felt a vague satisfaction when McCoy reached for the panic-handle as she pulled the car through the last turn and straightened out.

"Do you want to talk about it?" McCoy asked quietly. "Or not?"

"Talk about what?" Regan asked blandly.

"That family you told me about – the Roberts? What were they to you?"

"That wasn't their name," Regan said. "And what does it matter?"

"I don't think this case is about Timmy McMillan for you," McCoy said. Regan flinched and tried to hide it, knew she'd failed. "We all bring our life experience to the job," McCoy went on. "But you have to keep it separate. This crime was committed by Timmy McMillan, not by any boy you knew growing up. You can't – "

He stopped, but Regan heard the words hanging.  _You can't – change things. You can't – save them. You can't – make up for it._ Her eyes filled with tears.  _Meaningless physiological reaction to trauma,_  she recited to herself.

"Believe me, Regan," McCoy said. "I know. I know what it's like to want to use a case in front of you as a do-over for something that happened before."

"I just feel like he should have someone who looks past what everybody already knows," Regan gritted out.

"That's his defence lawyer's job," McCoy reminded her.

"Then why are we here?" Regan countered.

"We're officers of the court, remember?" McCoy said, his tone teasing. "Sworn to find justice in the operation of the law."

"And you always wanted to come to Carthage," Regan said, striving to match his light tone.

"And now we're here," McCoy said.

They came around the last corner and Regan saw the cemetery: two battered stone angels and a handful of headstones standing at a slant in the snow, surrounded by a low rusty iron fence that could not have possibly deterred a trespasser, but served instead simply to delineate the land of the dead from the world of the living.

Three cars were parked a careless angles near the fence: two marked State Police vehicles and a plain beige sedan. Three men, two in State Trooper uniforms and one in jeans and a parka, stood nearby, one drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup, all three smoking. Regan felt a rush of  _de ja vu_ so fierce she nearly ran off the road, shook it off and drew the car to a stop by the others.

"We certainly are," she said. "We certainly are."

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	8. Irony Oh Irony, You Are A Bitter Fruit To Eat

"You two should stay in your car," Trooper Harris said. The other two men in the same grey uniform – Trooper Bill Dawson, McCoy reminded himself, and Trooper Walt Atkins – nodded agreement. "Let us calm things down."

"Are these people dangerous?" McCoy asked. Beside him, Regan folded her arms across her chest and hunched her shoulders against the cold.

The lean man plain clothes, BCI Agent Dan Rollins, laughed bitterly. "The McMillans? Dangerous? No more than any feral animal." He dropped his cigarette butt and crushed it underfoot.

"Just need to handle them right," Dawson said, nodding agreement. "Remind them you're in charge. Remind them of how things stand."

Harris looked from McCoy to Regan and back again. "It's not as bad as it sounds," he said. "We just don't know who's home there today. There's cousins all over just as wild as the boys were. And Therese. It's best to keep a handle on the situation."

The four local law officers had come in three separate cars: two marked and an unmarked with a bubble on the roof. They went back to their vehicles with a few more quick remarks about the way they planned to handle things at the McMillan house.

McCoy and Regan got back in their car. Regan turned the key in the ignition and prepared to follow the other cars at a cautious distance.

"I don't like this," she said softly.

"Too risky?" McCoy asked.

She shook her head. "No. I mean – this isn't how I'd do it."

"They seem to have everything under control," McCoy said.

"No," Regan said firmly. "They're itching for a chance to show the McMillans who's boss. They're itching for a fight. Control is the last thing they have, Jack." She touched the accelerator and eased the car forward. "And we've given them the excuse. By coming here. We've given them the excuse."

"You're over-dramatising the situation," McCoy said. "If local law enforcement were so hell-bent on taking on this family, they wouldn't need us here to find a reason. And I think you're being unfair to the troopers. With what we've heard today, it's no surprise they're cautious." He turned in his seat to look at her. "How often do we hear of police officers getting hurt, knocking on the wrong door, stopping the wrong car?"

"Do you really want to explain the dangers of police work to me?" Regan snapped.

McCoy saw the opportunity and took it. "Is that how you got shot?" he asked.

She was silent a long moment, muscles working in her jaw. "No. And that isn't the point. The point is, there's ways to handle this kind of situation. And I have the feeling those cowboys ahead of us aren't necessarily looking at options B through F."

"That's their business, not ours," McCoy pointed out. "Concentrate on what we're here for. Let them do their job and you do yours."

Regan made a wordless noise, whether of protest or acquiescence McCoy couldn't tell, and brought the car to a stop twenty feet short of the place the three cops had parked, in a small clearing.

Another twenty feet beyond the cars was a ramshackle house. The roof was patched with rusty tin. Two cars up on blocks sat off to the side. A deep porch wrapped around two sides of the house and a flight of rotting steps with missing boards led down to the yard.

All four cops were out of their cars – standing  _behind_  them, McCoy noted,  _ready to take cover_. He could see that Dan Rollins was speaking but couldn't hear what he was saying.

Regan leaned forward in her seat, and then unsnapped her seat-belt and reached for the door-handle.

"Regan," McCoy said warningly.

"I promise I'll stay right here by the car," Regan said impatiently. She got out of the car and shut the door behind her. That made McCoy the only one sheltering in a car from the cold and from any stray McMillan bullets, and after a moment he got out as well. Regan shot him an amused glance as if she knew exactly what had prompted his change of mind. McCoy pointedly ignored her and turned his attention to the scene in front of them.

" Therese McMillan!" Rollins shouted. "We know you're home. Come out on the porch. There are some people here who want to talk to you."

Out of the corner of his eye McCoy could see Regan shake her head slightly. He considered reminding her again that they were there as prosecutors, not police.  _But it wouldn't do any good this time either._

He had watched Regan move through the town of Carthage, calm and confident with witnesses, easily collegial with the local police.  _Look how much good it's done her to get out of the DA's Office_ , he'd thought, congratulating himself on the success of his spur-of-the-moment plan.  _Spend a little time with Regan out of the office, see how she's really doing after what Walters put her through – find out if whatever's bugging her about Timmy_   _McMillan will affect her work on the case._

_Maybe find out a little about what lies behind those silences, those evasions – those out-and-out lies._

Now, as Regan stood in the snow just outside the perimeter of the police scene, almost on tiptoe with eagerness to be  _in_ it, to run it the way she thought it ought to be run, McCoy realised just how  _thoroughly_ she had left the DA's Office behind.

His spur-of-the-moment plan was beginning to seem on the reckless side of impulsive. He was standing in the snow with four armed men between him and the local equivalent of the Hole-In-The-Wall gang, next to an ADA who he now realised had not been thinking like a lawyer for quite some time.

The irony didn't escape him.

_The smart thing to do_ , McCoy thought,  _is to get us out of here._

Even as he thought it, the door of the house opened.

" Dan Rollins, you get off our property," a woman yelled. "And take that sonofabitch Dawson with you."

"Now Therese, you just calm down. There are some city folks, lawyers, here to talk to you," Rollins called.

The door opened wider and Therese McMillan came out on the porch.

She was a small woman in a pink parka over a floral housedress. Her hair was a tangled cloud of faded yellow around her head. Her legs were bare despite the cold, and she was wearing lime green slippers.

The most striking things about her, however, were that she was heavily pregnant – and she was carrying a shotgun.

"Oh, here we go," Regan muttered.

"Now, Therese, put the gun down," Rollins shouted.

"I've got a right to bear arms," Therese countered. "And on my own property, too." She racked a shell into the chamber, the chilly grating noise echoing around the icy clearing. The tension wound up a perceptible four or five notches as the four cops ducked a little and dropped hands to their guns.

"Now, Therese, let's be sensible," Harris said.

"I'm quite damn sensible," Therese said. " _You're_  trespassing."

She raised the gun to her shoulder and the cops ducked a little more. Dawson drew his weapon.

" Jack!" Regan said imploringly. "Somebody's going to get shot here!"

"Let them do their job," McCoy warned her.

She shifted restlessly, shuffling her feet in the snow. "We're here to interview Timmy McMillan's family. Do you think we can do  _our_  job if this turns into the shoot-out at the OK Corral?"

" Therese, don't make us do something you'll regret," Dawson shouted, an angry edge to his voice.

"Oh, for – " Regan took a long step forward, clear of the car, raising her hands out to the side. " Therese McMillan?" she called, her voice loud enough to carry through the whole clearing. " Therese McMillan, I'm here to talk to you about Timmy."

The gun came around in her direction but Regan didn't flinch.

"I want to talk to you about Timmy," she said again, her voice steady and clear.

"Who are you?" Therese asked suspiciously. "Are you one of those city lawyers?"

"Yes," Regan said. "My name is Regan Markham."

"Are you my brother's lawyer?" Therese asked.

"No," Regan said. "I'm from the DA's Office."

"You're trying to put my brother in jail!" Therese said. "I'm not going to tell you anything you can twist all around and make look bad against Timmy!"

"I don't need to talk to you to put Timmy in jail," Regan said reasonably.

"You're not coming in here to poke around," Therese said threateningly.

"Okay," Regan said. "Why don't you come down here? We can sit in the car and talk."

Therese hesitated. The barrel of the shotgun lowered a little. "Why do you want to talk to me, Miss DA Markham? Since you can put Timmy in jail anyway?"

"I want to do what's right, Miss McMillan. I can't do that unless I know what's what. Will you talk to me for a little while about your brother?"

After a long pause, Therese lowered the gun and set it aside. She came down the stairs with careful steps, leaning back to keep her balance against the counterweight of her swollen belly. McCoy noticed that while Harris, Atkins and Rollins had relaxed now that Therese McMillan had put down her gun, Dawson still had his weapon in his hand. Therese ignored him as she walked across the yard.

Regan opened the back driver's side door of the pool car for her, then got in the driver's seat as McCoy got in on the passenger side.

"I'm Jack McCoy, Ms McMillan," McCoy said. "I'm from the DA's Office in Manhattan as well. Thank you for agreeing to talk to us."

"I hope it's not a mistake," Therese said suspiciously.

Regan adjusted the rear-view mirror and McCoy realised she was turning it so she could see Therese in the back seat. She turned in her seat anyway, looking over her shoulder to meet Therese's gaze. "You know about the charges against Timmy?"

"Yeah. He hurt some girl down in the city," Therese said. McCoy noticed that she didn't qualify that with words like 'accused' or 'charged'.

"You believe that?" Regan asked, picking up on the same thing.

"I'd like not to," Therese said. "I would. He's blood. And it's a terrible thing." She shrugged, looked down at her hands. "I raised him. I wish I could believe I raised him right."

"But?" McCoy prompted.

"He got in with a bad crowd," Therese said.

"And he was always following on, wasn't he?" Regan said.

"He wasn't no retard," Therese said sharply. "I don't care what they said in school. He was just a little slower, and only sometimes."

"Your mama drank a lot when she was carrying him," Regan said, a statement, not a question. She turned back to face forward in the driver's seat, watching Therese in the rear-view mirror.

Therese was silent a moment, and then she leaned her hand against the window of the car and her head against her hand. "Mama drank a lot as far back as I can remember," she whispered.

"You gave up when you found out you were pregnant," Regan said, again a conversational remark rather than a question.

"I try to do my best," Therese said, nodding. McCoy thought she gave the statement more weight than it deserved.

"You did your best for Jeremy, for Dave and Timmy," Regan said.

"Wasn't enough," Therese said.

"We do what we can in this world," Regan said.

Sitting silent during an interview or an interrogation didn't come naturally to McCoy, but he was reluctant to break into the rapport between the two women. He watched them, Regan looking in the mirror at Therese, Therese looking out the window at the road to the cemetery.

"We do what we can in this world," Therese repeated. "Maybe that's true. But we don't all do all we can, do we?"

"And Timmy?" Regan asked. "What did he do?"

Therese closed her eyes. "Mama drank an awful lot when she was carrying him. An awful, awful lot. He never did get the hang of doing any thinking for himself. You know how that is?"

"He did what his brothers did," Regan said.

"And his cousins. And when they weren't doing his thinking for him, it was movies, those TV games," Therese said. "I heard about what he did to that woman. That poor girl." She ran her hand over her face, looked out the window a moment with her fingers pressed hard against her mouth. "He used to talk about girls sometimes. Not much, with me. What boy wants to talk about girls with his big sister, eh? But … sometimes …" She fell silent.

"What did he say?" McCoy prompted when it became clear she wasn't going to go on.

"He wanted a girl to like him, to be his girlfriend. What boy doesn't?" Therese said quickly, but she didn't look at either McCoy or the mirror that showed her Regan's face.

"Therese." Regan didn't turn to look back. Her voice was quiet but very clear. "Therese. You did what you could for Timmy. You did what you thought was right. You have to do what's right for him now."

"How's it right for him to go to jail?" Therese cried angrily. "You know what'll happen to a boy like him. You know how he'll end up. If he ever gets out. What he'll be like."

"You know how he'll end up if he walks away from what he did," Regan said. "How he'll end up. And where. Back here, Therese, with you and your parents and your baby."

Therese shook her head mutely, staring out the window, and then all of a sudden sighed and sank back in the car seat, her hands resting on her swollen stomach. "He had this game, on the TV, you know, with the little joystick doohickies? I caught him playing it one time. It was about a man chasing down women and forcing them – and raping them. And then they like it. I told him, time and over again, how stupid it was. How women aren't like that. How no girl would want – well. I told him." Therese rubbed her belly, eyes filling with tears. "But sometimes, when he talked about getting a girlfriend, about getting some girl to like him, about making her like him – I used to wonder, if he meant it like normal people meant it – or like that game meant it." She sniffled loudly and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "I did my best with him. I know you won't believe me. But I did. But those damn movies, those games … "

"You think he was trying to make Louise Yates  _like him_?" McCoy asked.

"I think he thought that's what would happen when he got started on the whole thing," Therese said. "And only realised what it all really meant later. But I'll tell you one thing, Mister, I will never believe he thought she'd end up killed. Never." She shook her head over and over. "They'll tell you in town that there are murderers in our family and that's true. Cop-killers, even. But Timmy isn't one of them. You ask him. You just ask him."

"Have you talked to Timmy since he was arrested?" McCoy asked.

Regan and Therese both turned to look at him with nearly identical expressions of disbelief. "Talked to him?" Therese asked. "Mister, we don't have the phone on here. I'm over six months gone and do you see a car here that isn't on blocks? How am I going to  _talk_ to my brother down in Rikers? Open the window and holler real loud?"

"When did his lawyer come to see you?" Regan asked.

"That Adler? A week ago. Smooth talker, that one. Came and asked me a lot of questions. Said that it wasn't Timmy's fault what happened and he would prove it." Therese paused. "He tell you he came up here? That why you're here?"

"How else would you have heard what Timmy did?" Regan asked.

"Plenty of people in town be happy to gloat," Therese pointed out.

"How many would drive out here to do it?" Regan asked.

"More than you'd think," Therese said, and then she grinned. "Not so many willing to risk the shotgun, though."

"You tell Mr Adler what you told us?" Regan asked.

"Not all of it," Therese said. "I didn't tell him – about that game. Should I have?"

"We can't answer that," McCoy said quickly as Regan opened her mouth. She closed it again and shot him a sharp glance.

"What's going to happen to him?" Therese asked. "What are you going to do to him?"

Regan looked in the mirror at Therese. 'Timmy's going to jail," she said quietly. "No matter how you look at it. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he didn't mean for Louise Yates to end up dead. But he planned the break-in."

"That lawyer said he can get him off," Therese said.

"We'll try your brother for the murder, the sexual assault, the assault, the break-in, and the conspiracy," McCoy said. "Mr Adler's defence applies to the first two. The rest – Timmy confessed."

" He's going to do real time, Therese," Regan said. "No matter what happens. Hard time."

Therese looked out the car window at the three police cars in front of her ramshackle house, at the hard frost-rimed ground and at the road that led to the cemetery before it went anywhere else. "Hard time," she said softly. "Hard time is right."

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	9. A Question Formed Upon Stilled Lips

"Thank you for talking to us, Ms McMillan," McCoy said.

Therese nodded in acknowledgement. "Maybe it's the wrong thing to do," she said. "But I been doing what I thought was the right thing for a long time now, and look how that's turned out."

She opened the car door and heaved herself to her feet. Regan and McCoy got out of the car as well.

"Therese," Regan said, "have you got a doctor you see? About the baby?"

"Women have been having babies for thousands of years just fine," Therese said. "I don't need to pay some doctor for it."

Regan laughed. "Yeah, maybe," she said. "but women have been dying having babies for thousands of years, too. And you know, there are a lot of clinics for pregnant women, and for mothers with little babies, free ones. You can get medical care, formula, vitamins for you, all that stuff."

"I know," Therese said. "Nearest one is ninety minutes on the train, each way. And how do I get to the station?"

"Ms Aitcheson still talks about how you were her favourite student," Regan said. "I bet she'd like to give you a lift to the station – in exchange for a little conversation."

There was something oddly touching in Regan's gentle efforts to fix up Therese's life, particularly as it came as an epilogue to an interview furthering the prosecution of Therese's brother. McCoy turned away so Therese wouldn't see him smile and misunderstand.  _A good cop_. McCoy would have bet any money that if Therese had been on Regan's beat in Seattle, Regan would have driven her to the clinic herself.

"Vitamins, formula," Therese said. "They'll tell me not to drink and to quit smoking. I done that. I even make Mama and Papa smoke out on the porch, even in this weather. Although, Miss DA, I have to ask myself, what difference will that make? This baby will be born McMillan. Whatever I do, it'll turn out the same."

"That's not true, Therese," Regan said urgently. "Everybody gets a chance. Everybody."

"Oh, yeah, easy for you to say, lady DA. Us – our blood runs bad. Always had." She studied Regan. "And we're not the only ones around, looks like. Who'd beating you, Miss DA? Is it him?" She turned to look at McCoy and her eyes were cold.

"No," Regan said. "No, Therese. Mr McCoy's not my – we're not – he's my boss. I got mugged. That's what happened to my face."

Therese looked at her closely. "You sure? You can tell me. He won't touch you again, I'm telling you now, boss or not."

Regan smiled. "I believe you. But I'm telling you, I got mugged."

"Okay," Therese said, accepting Regan's assurance. McCoy was relieved. Therese's tone had held the promise of an instant and permanent solution to any domestic violence problems Regan might have been having. Therese peered at Regan's cheek. "That'll heal up okay, you know. It'll be fine. I bet it won't even leave a mark." She patted Regan kindly on the arm. "You'll see. You'll look just fine when it heals, nice-looking lady like you." She cocked her head to one side. "You could stand to do something about your hair, though."

"So I hear," Regan said, and McCoy suppressed a snort of laughter. "So I'm going to call Ms Aitcheson, okay, and tell her to come by and see you?"

"She'd be wasting her time," Therese said. "Things go how they go."

"I don't believe that," Regan said. "You got a baby inside you that deserves a chance. You can do right by it."

"I did right by Timmy," Therese said. "I did right by Dave and Jeremy. I did my best."

"I know you did," Regan said. McCoy thought she sounded almost on the verge of tears. "I know you did your best."

"But my best isn't good enough, is it?" Therese said bitterly. "There's nothing I can do to save a McMillan from being a McMillan. This baby included."

She turned sharply away and began to trudge towards the house. McCoy watched her labour across the frosty ground, house-slippers sliding on the frozen grass. The four local police officers had gotten back in their cars while Therese had been talking to McCoy and Regan. As Therese struggled across the yard, Trooper Dawson pulled his patrol car around ready to drive away, stopping right by the house steps, forcing Therese to detour.

McCoy turned to look across the roof of the car at Regan, who was watching Dawson's antics with narrowed eyes. "What do you think?"

"I think she's given up," Regan said. "And I think she should have got out of here long ago. And I think her last chance is to get out now."

"And her parents? She should save herself at their expense?" McCoy asked.

"How much self-sacrifice do we have the right to expect from her?" Regan asked tiredly.

McCoy looked at her pale, drawn face.  _As much as a boy who spent his teenage years in between his father's fists and his mother,_ he could have retorted, and won the argument, if that was anything he was  _ever_  going to talk about with Regan Markham, or with  _anyone_. In that moment of silence Regan turned to meet his gaze, her eyes dull with misery, and memory stirred.

_The bed rocks beneath him with the alcohol he's drunk. Regan blurs and splits into three. McCoy blinks and concentrates, forcing the three expressionless women looking down at him into one slightly dishevelled, tired-looking ADA._

_"When did you learn to check for alcohol poisoning?" he asks, pleased that the words come out clearly, with barely any slur. "On the job?"_

_"No," Regan tells him, monumentally calm. "Childhood lessons in making sure mommy and daddy don't die in the night."_

"Regan," McCoy began, "that family you were talking about?"

She shook her head, refusal or denial, McCoy couldn't tell. "I'm tired, Jack," she said softly. "Please. I'm so tired."

"Okay," he said. "Okay. You know – maybe this baby – maybe it'll give her a reason to turn things around."

"Maybe," Regan said, turning back to look at Therese, who was edging around Dawson's car. "Or maybe she'll smother it in its crib to save it from the McMillan curse." Her voice was flat and bitter.

McCoy sought for something to lighten her mood. "Therese is right about one thing, at least," he said.

"You can't believe that baby is predestined for grief!" Regan said incredulously.

"No." McCoy said. "I don't. But I do think you really  _could_  stand to do something about your hair."

Regan snorted, a smile tugging the corners of her mouth. "I'm not taking grooming advice from the man the  _New York Post_  described as 'perennially rumpled'."

"You've been reading my clips," McCoy said. "I'm flattered."

Regan snorted. "I wouldn't – now what …?" her voice trailed away and McCoy followed her gaze.

Dawson had leaned across from the driver's seat in his patrol car and was talking to Therese out the open passenger window. McCoy couldn't quite hear what he was saying, but he could see Therese McMillan's face getting colder and colder.

Then the wind shifted and brought Dawson's voice clearly to him. "It would save a lot of time," Dawson said. The words were innocuous. The tone was not, and Therese's head went back as if he'd spat in her face.

She turned on her heel and began to climb the rickety steps to her front porch, slowly and carefully.

"You can't run from the truth, Therese," Dawson called after her. "You can walk away from me, but you know I'm right – about you, about that baby in your belly. You know it."

McCoy was surprised to see Therese stop at the top of the steps and take a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the porch railing.  _She was so definite about having quit smoking_ , he thought, as she put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it, dropping the pack and lighter into the pocket of her parka.

"Oh no," Regan said softly. Her voice was barely more than a whisper but it was filled with a horror and desperation that raised the hair on the back of McCoy's neck. He turned towards her. "Therese!" Regan shouted frantically, lunging forward. She took two running strides and slipped on the frost, falling heavily against the boot of the car. The impact drew a groan of pain from her and she doubled over, clutching her side where McCoy knew her ribs were cracked from Edward Walters's kicks. He hurried around the car towards her as she dragged herself upright, leaning on the car, grey-faced and sweating with pain. "Therese!" she called weakly. "Don't!"

McCoy followed Regan's gaze to the house as Therese stuck the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and turned back to face Dawson's patrol car. As she turned she reached down and picked up the shotgun leaning against the porch railing.

Behind him Regan heaved a painful, sobbing breath. McCoy heard her feet crunch on the frozen ground. He couldn't tear his gaze away from Therese McMillan, turning, seemingly in slow motion, turning and raising the gun. A part of his mind realised that Regan was drawing that breath against the pain of her cracked ribs to call out again to Therese McMillan, realised that Regan was trying to reach the porch before this moment could take its final, fatal twist. He reached out to stop her passing him, to keep her safely out of it.

" ** _Gun_**!" Regan screamed at the top of her voice, grabbing McCoy's arm and jacket and dragging him to the ground.

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	10. Irony, Oh Irony, You Are A Treacherous Son Of A Bitch

" ** _Gun_**!" Regan screamed at the top of her voice.

She tackled McCoy from behind, grabbing his arm and jacket and dragging him to the ground.

Falling, McCoy saw Therese McMillan aim the shotgun in the wound-down window of Dawson's patrol car, and then white light stretched out from the barrel of the gun into the car and the car windows turned instantly from clear to milky white as the blast crazed the safety glass and a spray of pink and red blotching made an abstract pattern on the inside of the windows on the driver's side and finally McCoy heard the  _boom_ of the shotgun as he hit the ground.

The impact winded him. Regan was sprawled across him, gripping his shoulder hard enough to bruise. McCoy turned his head to see her fumbling at her hip, face white and blank, and he realised she was trying to draw the gun she no longer carried.

Then Rollins, Atkins and Harris were out of their cars, weapons drawn. One shot cracked through the winter air, McCoy couldn't tell from whose gun, and blood bloomed on Therese McMillan's face and the barrel of the shotgun drifted down to the side and her knees began to buckle and then before she could fall a thunder of gunfire filled the clearing and there was blood everywhere on her and then she was down.

The shotgun falling from her hand made a clatter that sounded weak and tinny in the aftermath of the gunfire.

Silence rushed into the clearing.

In the silence McCoy could hear his own pulse pounding in his ears. Regan was breathing fast and hoarse. She had stopped reaching for a non-existent gun, but she still held McCoy down, long-limbed body stretched over him, one hand clenched on his jacket, the other clutching at the frosty grass. Her coat was thin enough for McCoy to feel the heat of her body and the tremors running through her.

The silence stretched and stretched, and then Harris let out a low groan. He ran to Dawson's car, stumbling and sliding on the frozen ground. Breathing in noisy sobs, he fumbled with the driver's door for long agonising seconds and then managed to yank it open.

What used to be Bill Dawson fell out onto the icy ground.

Harris stared. "Oh. Oh, god!" he choked, stumbled backwards and sat down hard.

McCoy looked long enough to be sure Dawson was beyond help, and then turned away. He looked at Regan and saw her gaze fixed on the ruined man sprawled by his car. Her breath came shallow, and sweat beaded her face despite the chill of the air.

"Regan," he said quietly, and then more sharply, "Regan!"

Regan blinked rapidly, and then her white-knuckled grip on him eased. She rolled away from him and got to her feet. The movement made her hiss with pain.

"You okay?" McCoy asked her as she bent forward, clutching her side.

"I'll live," she said tightly, then turned away. She staggered a few steps and fell to her hands and knees, retching.

McCoy levered himself to his feet against the car. Before he could reach Regan she was on her feet again, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She scuffed snow over the place with the toe of one waterlogged boot and turned towards the house.

Harris sat motionless, staring at Dawson's body sprawled across the frozen ground. Atkins was fumbling to reload his weapon. Rollins had already done so and was holding a steady bead on the front door of the McMillan house.  _Waiting for whoever might be inside. For whoever might be inside and armed._

"Get back in the car," McCoy said. "Regan? We need to get back in the car."

She ignored him and began to walk towards the house.

"Regan!" McCoy called.

"Ma'am? Ma'am, the house isn't clear," Rollins called. "Ma'am, stay back!"

Regan kept walking, stumbling a little but not stopping. McCoy waited for one of the police officers to move to intercept her. By the time he realised they weren't going to do so, Regan was halfway to the porch.

Cursing to himself, McCoy hurried after her.  _Like she thinks she's bullet-proof_ , he thought, not the first time he'd had that thought where Regan Markham was concerned.

She had reached the steps when McCoy caught up with her. He grabbed her arm as she climbed the last few steps and Regan stopped – perhaps because McCoy'd stopped her, perhaps because she'd reached where she had been going all along. McCoy stopped as well, one step below her, the difference in elevation bringing them to almost exactly the same height. He let go of Regan's arm and dropped his hand to his side. After a moment, Regan reached across the little distance between them and slipped her hand in his. Her fingers were very cold.

Therese McMillan lay on her back on the porch. Her eyes were open and unblinking. Blood soaked the front of her housedress and pooled slowly beneath her. The cigarette she had been smoking had fallen from her mouth and smouldered beside her. The gun, too, had fallen away to the side and her hands were empty, palm up against the wooden boards of the porch.

Her feet in their lime green slippers were turned inwards, toes touching. The left one was worn almost through at the heel. The housedress had ridden up as she fell, revealing her thighs, spidered with clumps of varicose veins.

The widening pool of blood reached the burning cigarette and extinguished it with a hiss.

"The baby – " McCoy started. "A caesarean – "

"Too late," Regan said dully. "Already too late." She ran her free hand over her face. "I guess Therese thought it always was."

McCoy tightened his grip on her hand and put his other hand on her shoulder. "Come on, Regan. Come on." He tried to draw her back down the stairs and he thought Regan might be about to yield to his urging when a noise within the house froze them both.

" Terry?" a quavering voice called. " Terry? What's going on?" Through the screen McCoy saw the front door open, and an old man peered out at them. " Terry?"

Regan took two quick steps forward, avoiding the blood, putting herself between the door and the body. "She's lying down right now, Papa," Regan said. She opened the screen door and put her hands on the old man's shoulders.

He tried to peer past her. " Terry?"

"She's lying down," Regan said reassuringly. "Tell me, Papa, who else is in the house? Who's here today?"

"Just Terry and Mama," the senior McMillan quavered.

"Where's Mama?" Regan asked gently.

"She's having her nap. She always has her nap this time of day."

"Okay," Regan said. "Let's go inside, okay, Papa? It's cold out here. Let's go inside."

She turned him around and steered him gently back into the house.

McCoy was about to follow when running footsteps behind him made him turn.  _Atkins and Rollins have finally decided they can't shirk risks an unarmed woman is willing to run._

They hurried up the steps, guns drawn. " Mr McCoy, get back in your car. Get back in your car," Rollins barked. "I don't need two civilians to worry about. Get back in your car."

"Get Ms Markham out of that house," McCoy ordered.

"Get back in your car and stay out of my way," Rollins snapped.

Reluctantly, McCoy backed down the steps. He could hear Atkins shouting at someone inside the house, voice cracking on the shrill edge of hysteria, Rollins bellowing over him. McCoy nearly backed into Dawson's car but managed to stop short before he touched it. Edging his way around it he moved a little way from the steps. He kept his back to Dawson's body. McCoy had seen crime scenes, bodies and autopsies from time to time in his years at the DA's Office, and he had a strong stomach, but he wasn't eager to spend much time looking at what a shotgun could do to a man's head.

After a few minutes Regan came out of the house. She skirted Therese's body and came slowly down the steps, one at a time, hunched up a little and holding her side.

McCoy met her at the foot of the steps. Regan looked up at him, face grey, eyes empty. "Rollins called for backup. And for Narcan for Mrs McMillan." She swayed a little and McCoy took her arm. She leaned on him. "They want us to give statements at the station. Rollins said in a couple of hours."

"They don't want us to stay here?" McCoy asked.

"Welcome to the minors," Regan said sourly. She closed her eyes for a moment. "I need to sit down, Jack," she whispered. "I'm so tired."

He put his arm around her waist, trying to avoid her bruises and cracked ribs. With his other hand beneath her elbow he helped her to their car. They passed Harris sitting on the ground a little way away from Dawson's body, gun still in his hand. He was staring at nothing, seeming unaware of the tears trickling down his face.

"Trooper Harris," McCoy said. "Trooper Harris!"

The young man looked up at him dazedly.

"Trooper, holster your weapon and secure the scene!" McCoy ordered brusquely.

Harris blinked at him. "Yes. Yes, sir. I will." He put his gun away and got clumsily to his feet. His colour was bad and McCoy thought he probably needed a doctor's attention but at least he had something to do, something to focus on besides the bodies, and McCoy was fully occupied getting Regan to the car.  _Before she collapses completely,_  he thought, glancing down at her pale, sweaty face.

"Can you drive, please?" Regan asked distantly, and when McCoy nodded she fumbled in her pocket and pulled out the car keys, pressing them into his hand. McCoy unlocked the car and eased Regan into the front passenger seat. Once he was in the driver's seat he turned the ignition and started the heater. Regan leaned back in her seat, eyes closed.

"Are you hurt?" McCoy asked. "Did something –  _happen_  – inside the house?"

Regan rolled her head from side to side against the headrest. "Nobody home but Mr and Mrs McMillan. Neither of them in any shape to cause trouble. Your old  _granny_  could take them." She started to take her coat off, flinched sharply and stopped.

"You  _are_  hurt," McCoy said.

Regan shook her head. "I just fell hard, that's all."

"Maybe you should see a doctor," McCoy suggested.

"It's nothing," Regan said.

"It doesn't seem like nothing," McCoy said. "Don't be a hero, Regan."

"A hero?" Regan said, incredulous. "A fucking hero, Jack? I got us up here because I wanted to ride to Timmy McMillan's rescue. What did I get? Three lives lost. Three people killed because I wanted to be a hero." She stopped, gasping, her hand pressed against her side.

"No, no, no," McCoy said, reaching over to put his hand on her knee. "No, you can't think like that, Regan. Listen to me. Therese McMillan made a decision. Suicide by cop. You didn't do that. We didn't cause that."

"It's not suicide by cop, Jack, when you kill the cop," Regan said harshly. "Oh, for chrissakes, will you just get me out of here, Jack, will you, please?"

"Okay," McCoy said. He put the car in gear. "Okay."

As he drove away from the McMillan house Regan leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes.

"I'm going to take you to the doctor," McCoy said.

"I think you'll find the doctor is on his way to the crime scene," Regan said. "Towns like this, the doctor tends to be the M.E. as well." She touched her side gingerly. "Nothing's broken. I know what that feels like. Just take me back to the motel."

"All right," McCoy said, not persuaded.  _There has to be another doctor in this town, or nearby. We can revisit this argument when I know where._

They passed the cemetery. McCoy wondered if both Bill Dawson and Therese McMillan would be buried there.

"Two more crooked headstones," Regan murmured, echoing his thoughts.

"Do you want to – "

"Talk about it?" Regan finished sourly. "Nothing to talk about."

" Anita Van Buren mentioned to me once that Ed Green is 'sensitive' about being shot at these days," McCoy said. He stole a glance at her pale, set face. "How about you?"

"I've always been sensitive about being shot at," Regan said, reaching for dry humour and almost making it. McCoy smiled, half at the joke and half in acknowledgement of how deftly she'd evaded him.  _Round one to Regan._

"Doesn't bring back bad memories?" McCoy probed.

Regan made a fist and then flattened her hand against the car window. " Jesus, Jack, you're as subtle as a sledgehammer."

"Yeah, and you're as white as a ghost – or someone who's seen one," McCoy retorted.

"I just saw two people killed – three lives lost. And  _your_  cheeks aren't exactly rosy." Regan bunched her hand into a fist again and pressed it against her mouth.

"So are you really telling me that all those bullets flying around didn't make you think about the time you got shot?" McCoy said, putting as much disbelief as he could in his tone.

Regan was silent for a long time as the trees flicked past the windows. "I was in the john," she said. "When the shooting started. I was in the john when I heard the first shots.  _Pulling up my pants_  makes me think about the time I got shot."

_Bravo_ , McCoy thought.  _Not a word of a lie but a perfect parry, nonetheless. Four to nil._

He tried a different tack. "You seemed to build a good rapport with Therese McMillan. It was almost as if you two knew each other. And then – one minute she's a family member of a defendant who you're trying to get to open up – the next we're in the middle of a gunfight and the woman you're trying to build a relationship with is dead. So, do you want to talk about it?"

"No," Regan said. " _No_ , I don't want to talk about it.  _No_ , it wasn't a gunfight. It was two executions. And  _no_ , I didn't know her. Not even slightly. I didn't know her at all. "

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	11. The First To Unlock Those Rusty Doors

Regan watched the trees flash past outside the passenger window as McCoy drove them back to the motel. She felt as if the whole world was like those winter-bare trees: speeding past her on the other side of a pane of cold glass. When she touched the window the smooth glass felt indistinct, like the memory of a window rather than anything real and present. The pain in her side,  _that_ she could feel, sour adrenaline in her gut, the taste of bile in her mouth. They belonged to the real, vivid world: the world made sharp-edged and immediate by fear and blood and horror. The stomach-twisting second when she'd felt it all go wrong hit her over and over with every breath.

_Regan feels the moment turn bad. It's an understanding of the body, not the mind, and it comes to her as raw inexplicable terror. She is already moving, already shouting, when the rational part of her mind realises that Therese's lit cigarette signals a final surrender to despair. Then that thought flashes away from her, washed on a flood-tide of adrenaline that short-circuits everything except reaction._

Her head was full of gunfire and blood and screaming. She turned and looked at across at Jack McCoy's unreadable profile. His eyes were hooded, his mouth set in a grim line. Regan wondered if he too were trapped in an ever-shrinking loop of  _no_  and  _stop_ and  _gun_ , of grief and horror.  _I should – I should say … something. I should make sure my partner's all right. I should …_ But she was hemmed in on all sides by the grim rasp of a shotgun shell being jacked into the chamber and couldn't find words she could force out of her dry and dusty mouth. She wanted to reach out and touch McCoy, to at least confirm that he was real, that he was there, but she was afraid that if she did lean over and lay her hand across his on the wheel she'd find it as insubstantial, as nebulous, as the glass.

_Her body knows this state of hyper-reaction too. Knows terror. Knows what it means. Regan throws herself forward, hearing gunfire, hearing the ack-ack-ack of an automatic, hearing screaming, her heart going so hard she can barely get her pants up, except that isn't **now** , is it,  **now** is frost and cold and bare branches and a woman with a shotgun._

Regan looked at lifeless trees and knew that none of it was  _now_ , not the woman with the shotgun, not the screaming, none of it was  _now,_ all of it was  _over_.

And at the same time she knew that all of it was now.  _All of it **always will be** now._

**_Now_ ** _it's going badly wrong but it's not too late, not yet, if everybody can just stop still for a minute, stop still and find a way to back down. Regan knows she can stop it, if she can just move fast enough, if she can just – if she can get her pants up and get out of the washroom and get her hands on a gun – if she can cross the distance between herself and Therese McMillan, if she can reach her, reach her in time, if she can – can just -_

"Regan?"

She realised the car was stopped in the motel parking lot and McCoy was looking at her, frowning. He reached over and touched the back of her hand to get her attention and despite her fears, his fingers were warm and solid. The blood and the noise receded and Regan drew a shaky breath of relief.

Then he moved his hand back to the wheel. "Wake up," he said. "We're here,"

_This is a room that's supposed to be safe no matter what, but there's blood on the floor and he's screaming and she's never heard a sound like that before in her life, that screaming, she'd give anything to make it stop, make it stop, please, stop._

_No._ There was no blood here. Her chest ached sharply, but it was the pain of cracked ribs, that was all.  _That was then. Not now. Then._

_Stop Therese stop please stop stop stop!_

Whatever McCoy was saying to her was lost in the noise in her head. He'd have to shout to make himself heard over the screaming and she wasn't about to explain that to him. He spoke again, frowning, and Regan fumbled with her seatbelt.

_Blood on the floor and screaming, screaming, screaming …the shotgun roars – or is it the stutter of gunfire – it's the sound of dying, it's her death coming closer, it's the sound that goes with blood and screaming._

She got out of the car while McCoy was still coming around to open the door for her and forced her feet to carry her toward her room. It took all her concentration to get her room key out of her pocket and into the lock. She couldn't get her fingers to grip the key tightly enough to turn it. McCoy put his hand over hers and unlocked the door. Regan stumbled into the room, vaguely aware that he followed her in.

_She picks the gun up off the floor and weighs it in her trembling hand. Gotta do it, girl. Get it right. She turns fast around the corner, following the gun, and there he is, and she can't shoot him, not at this distance, and whether he knows that or not he's firing at her, ack-ack-ack deafening indoors and she has to keep moving forward because she's trying to get there in time and then her feet are going sideways out from under her and she falls against the car. Pain explodes in her side, blinds and suffocates her for a second, can't see can't breathe can't think except to know that if she goes down she's gone, if she gives up she's gone, and she pushes up against the car and tries to hold up the gun and sucks a breath and tries to hear past the screaming and screaming and screaming._

"I have to lie down," she mumbled.

"I think that's a good idea," McCoy said.

_At first she thinks she's only fallen. It takes seconds for her to understand that she's been hit. It feels like being punched, and then the pain, and then the blood running slick down under her shirt. Therese is turning with the gun and all Regan can think is stop stop stop and she tries to find something to do or say that will make it stop, make it stop stop stop - her words come out as a croak and she fights against the pain to get enough air for a real shout, but the bullets have torn up her gut and her chest and she can't, she can't – can barely stay up, has to stay up, go down and you're gone –_

Regan didn't bother to shuck her coat or take off her shoes. She crawled onto the bed and curled up with her face to the wall.

"Will you let me know, when we have to go?" she asked McCoy. "To the station? Will you come get me?"

_Stop stop stop and then the gun comes around so far that Regan can't stop anything any more and she lets go of even the possibility and now it's about living through the next minute so she goes for cover and takes her partner down with her, trying to keep herself between him and the gun and reaching for her own weapon and reaching and reaching and knowing that something isn't right because her partner wasn't there, was he, when the shooting started, he shouldn't be there where every breath she takes bubbles and whistles and every breath gives her less and less oxygen and hot blood soaks her shirt and trousers._

"I'll  _tell_ you when it's time," McCoy said. "I'll be here." Regan rolled over a little so she could see him sitting in the rickety chair the motel provided. "Did you really think I'd leave you alone?" he said, seeming irritated.

_It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. And he's screaming and screaming and there's blood on the floor and blood soaking her uniform and the gun, the gun, the gun weighs so much she can't believe that she can even raise it, let alone keep a steady bead on the perp, but she has to, has to keep the gun up – has to keep her partner down out of the line of fire, has to draw her weapon – has to - because if she goes down, she's gone. And so is everyone else, the wounded, the bleeding, the screaming here in this room. If she goes down, they're all gone. So she has to stay up. Has to keep breathing, as blood fills her lung and air fills her chest. Has to hold up the heavy, heavy gun._

"Okay," Regan said. It wasn't enough, but she couldn't find any other words past the pain in her side and the screaming in her head.

_She's on the ground and the ground is cold and she's cold except where she's lying over McCoy and she's trying to think through the pain and the screaming because if she gives up she's gone and then the air is full of noise and bullets and Therese McMillan goes down with her face empty and her hands open. And he's screaming and screaming and screaming and she has to hold the gun up._

_No. Blood on the snow, not on the floor. Blood on the frosty grass and something that used to be a man. Blood in her mouth. Blood on the floor. Blood –_

_She has to keep the gun up. It would be easier if he'd stop screaming._

Regan curled up again, wrapping her arms around her stomach.

She couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe because  _there was a bullet in her lung_   _and her chest is full of blood_.

No. She couldn't breathe because of  _the tape over her mouth and the cord around her neck._

No. She couldn't breath because of the pain in her side because  _her feet go sideways from under her and she falls against the car and then her partner is between her and the shotgun and she grits her teeth and tackles him down, falling hard, god it hurts, it hurts, but she holds him down out of the line of fire and reaches for her weapon, reaches, reaches -_

_She has to hold up the heavy heavy gun. Has to stay on her feet. Has to ignore the screaming. Go down and you're gone. It would be easier to concentrate if he would stop screaming. Go down and you're gone. If only he would stop, stop, please, stop, just for a minute, please. Please!_

Behind her, Regan heard McCoy dialling a number on his cell-phone. She thought he might be calling the Carthage police, or the office in Manhattan, but after a moment he said, quietly, "It's Jack," so she guessed it wasn't business. Regan could hear his voice faintly through the screaming. She concentrated, clinging to the faint thread of his voice, following it through the labyrinth of  _blood_ and  _screaming_.

"Out of town for the weekend," McCoy said softly to whoever he'd called. "And you?"

Regan tried to hear only McCoy, not gunfire, not screams, not an old man's crackly voice telling her what she ought to be doing.

_Man draws down on you …_

"Sounds ideal," McCoy said.

_There's not much left of Bill_   _Dawson that's recognisably human no matter how hard Regan looks and looks at the ruin on the ground. There's no way he can be alive but she can hear him screaming to her for help, begging, pleading, and then screaming for his mother, screaming and screaming and –_

"I can do that. I'll be back tomorrow, at the latest. I'll come round," McCoy said.

_Man draws down on you …_

**_Put him in the ground_ ** **.**

_Then or later._

"It's  _no_ trouble," McCoy insisted. "Don't get up on that ladder by yourself."

_A voice calls her and Regan turns her head to meet Jack_   _McCoy's gaze and the screaming stops._

"Well, humour me." There was amused tolerance in his voice. "Pretend I'm not."

_The screaming stops. A wave of relief washes over Regan at the silence. The screaming has, thank god, thank god, finally stopped. Later, she will be unable to deny that a part of her understood what that silence meant. But the noise was so unbearable that she couldn't even think about it. All she could think was please please please stop, when what that meant wasplease please please die. And he did. And she thought thank god, thank god._

"Yeah. You too," McCoy said warmly. Regan thought maybe he was talking to a girlfriend.  _Love you – yeah, you too_. No, that wasn't it.  _Take care, Jack – yeah, you too._  Not a girlfriend.  _Don't get up on that ladder …_

_Therese McMillan's swollen stomach is a grotesque mockery, a promise of new life that is already a tomb. Regan wonders if, should she put her hand on Therese's belly, she would feel her child still moving._

She rolled over as McCoy cut the connection on his cell. "How's Ms Carmichael?" she asked. McCoy looked startled, and Regan tried to shrug, but it didn't quite work, given she was lying on her back. "If I were you … how  _is_  Ms Carmichael? And – the baby?"

McCoy looked at her a long moment.

"None of my business?" Regan asked.

"I think I talked her out of changing the light bulb at the top of her stairs by herself," McCoy said finally.

"You do like that white horse, don't you, Jack?" Regan said without thinking, and then held her breath.  _Don't take offence, Jack, please. You can't be mad at me. I can't take it. Not today. Don't leave me here in the dark, with the screaming, please, Jack, don't be mad, please …_

She sighed in relief when McCoy grinned. "Changing a light bulb is a relatively easy way to earn a woman's gratitude," he said dryly.

Regan was surprised into laughing, and she winced and pressed her hand to her side.

"You all right?" McCoy asked immediately. He got up and came over to the bed.

"Yeah," Regan said, and then before she could say anything else McCoy was sitting on the edge of the bed, pushing aside her unbuttoned coat.

"Let me see," he said. As he reached for the hem of her shirt adrenaline poured into Regan's bloodstream again with a painful jolt that had her heart pounding and her breath tight in her throat.

She grabbed his hands. "It's fine," she said sharply.

"Let me make sure," McCoy said.

"Because that  _law_  degree makes you a medical expert!" Regan snarled, trying to edge away from him without letting go of his hands and failing.

"I have some experience with bruises," McCoy said, gently persistent.

"Jack,  _no_!" Regan cried.

The raw panic in her voice startled them both.

"Okay," McCoy said very softly, slowly moving his hands away from her. Regan released her grip on his fingers and edged over to the far side of the bed. McCoy stood up and backed a few steps away. He tucked his hands in his pockets.

Regan pushed herself up to lean on the headboard and folded her arms over her stomach. For a few minutes neither of them moved, and then McCoy went to the cupboard where the motel had provided an electric kettle, instant coffee, sugar and long-life creamer. Regan watched silently as he made two cups of coffee, working on making her breathing slow and even. When he brought her one of the cups she was able to take it in hands that barely trembled. McCoy stepped back, leaning against the wall and watching Regan over the rim of his own cup as he drank.

The coffee was milky and very sweet. Regan preferred her coffee black but she drank obediently, knowing that McCoy was right, she needed the sustenance more than the caffeine.

"Does it hurt?' McCoy asked after a moment.

"Hurts like a sonofabitch," Regan admitted.

"Got anything to take?"

"They gave me some pills at the hospital last week," Regan said. "Get this witness statement out of the way and I'll take one."

"I don't think there's much more for us to do up here," McCoy said. "We can head back to the city after we talk to the cops."

"Okay," Regan said.

"I want you to see a doctor before we start the drive back," McCoy said. His voice was mild but his tone was final. Regan had heard that note in his voice during case conferences. She'd learnt it meant that McCoy had well and truly made up his mind, and it would take more than merely mortal powers of persuasion to shift him. She nodded her surrender and set her empty cup down on the bedside table.

She looked up to see McCoy watching her. As she met his gaze his mouth quirked in a smile, and she had the odd feeling that he saw straight through her. That he knew – knew  _everything._

_But that's just not possible_ , Regan thought.  _There's no way – no way he can know. No way he can understand._

_Just a good prosecutor's trick_.  _Just part of the Jack_   _McCoy play-book._

"Do you want me to pack your stuff?" McCoy asked her.

"I'm packed," Regan said.

"Girl Scout," McCoy said with a chuckle. "I'll get my bags. We should get moving."

"Yeah," Regan said. "I guess we have a long way to go."

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	12. It Doesn't Really Matter Anyway

_Carthage PD_

_4.25 pm Saturday 2 December 2006_

* * *

 

A young State Trooper knocked diffidently on the door of the office where McCoy had been waiting for an hour and a half.

"Hello again," she said.

The first time she'd come in she'd introduced herself as Mary Grafton, and the second,  _and_ the third. Each time McCoy had felt a little jolt, even though Mary Grafton had dark hair and skin with a hint of bronze and looked nothing like Mary Firienze.  _Therese McMillan looked nothing like Abbie Carmichael, either, but all I could think about as I drove away from that house where her body lay was Abbie, was making Abbie safe._

_Life is fragile_. Only natural his thoughts should turn to the hostages he gave to fortune – and the ones he'd already lost.

"I've got some coffee, sir, if you'd like it," Trooper Grafton said, shaking McCoy from his reverie.

"No thank you," McCoy said brusquely.  _And thinking of hostages to fortune …_ "Do you know how much longer Ms Markham will be?"

"Shouldn't be too much longer," Grafton said, as she had said the last five times McCoy had asked that question.

"Not to put too fine a point on it," McCoy said, impatience sharpening his voice, "but I've been hearing that for more than an hour. I'd like to know when we're going to be able to get out of here. We have a long drive ahead of us – and neither I, nor Ms Markham, have had anything to eat since breakfast."

"I can bring you a sandwich if you'd like, sir," Grafton said.

"You can bring me Regan Markham," McCoy said, his impatience tipping over into anger. "Neither of us were armed, neither of us played any part in the shooting. I was able to make that clear to Agent Cooper when he took my statement in less than fifteen minutes. I'm sure that at some time in the past two hours Ms Markham has been able to make the same facts evident to his partner, Agent Li, who is taking  _her_ statement. So now _I'd_ like to know when we'll be able to be on our way back to Manhattan."

"I'll see if I can find out how much longer it will be," Grafton said, also for the fifth time.

"You know what?" McCoy said, standing up, "Why don't I come with you?"

Mary Grafton protested, but as McCoy had calculated, she was too young and inexperienced to effectively refuse him. The office was a small one: two steps brought McCoy to the doorway, close enough to crowd Grafton. He was more than a head taller than she was –  _and with more of an appetite for confrontation, I'll bet._

Grafton made the mistake of taking a backwards step.

McCoy felt a tiny spark of triumph, and followed her, backing her down the hall, betting she wouldn't dare physically force him back into the office. He was right: Grafton gave in. Head hanging, she led him reluctantly down the hall.

McCoy followed close behind her, keeping the pressure on her. For the first time since the shooting he didn't feel like a passenger or a spectator. After Therese McMillan had gone down, McCoy had shaken off his shock enough to do what the circumstances required of him: take care of Regan, drive the car, talk to the police. When Grafton stonewalled him for the fifth time he had felt an enlivening pulse of anger that swept aside the last foggy traces of the daze he'd been in, and he nurtured that anger now. It made him feel sharper. It made him feel more like himself.

When McCoy had spoken to Agent Elliot Cooper, Cooper had said his partner, Minette Li, was taking Regan's statement. McCoy had assumed that Li would be talking to Regan in a spare office. That was where Cooper had taken McCoy's statement.

McCoy was surprised when Grafton led him to an interview room, and even more surprised when she opened the door: both Cooper  _and_  Li were sitting across the table from Regan.

All three looked to the door as it opened. The BCI agents had remarkably similar expressions of irritation that made them look startlingly alike. Regan looked at McCoy as if she were trying to remember where she'd seen him before. McCoy reflexively assessed her appearance as if she were a witness: her pallor, the slump in her shoulders, the dazed look on her face.

_If she were a prosecution witness, I'd be asking for a continuance. If she were testifying for the defence, I'd break her in thirty seconds._

No cop in McCoy's experience would have pressed a witness in such a state for this long.

_They're treating her like a suspect_ , McCoy thought.  _Well, that can stop_ ** _now_** _._

"Agent Cooper, I'd like to talk to you," he said.

"If you take a seat in the waiting room, sir - " Cooper said.

"I'd like to talk to you  _now_ ," McCoy said, putting enough of an edge to his voice to make it an order. Cooper jumped involuntarily and then pretended he was going to get up anyway. McCoy didn't give him the opportunity to shut the door by stepping back, but simply turned to the side, forcing Cooper to edge past him.

In the hall, Cooper tried to regain control of the situation. "Look, Mr McCoy, I know you're a big shot back in – "

"Why is Ms Markham being interrogated?" McCoy asked, talking straight over him.

"She's a witness giving a statement," Cooper said.

"She's in an interview room with two BCI Agents sitting across from her," McCoy said. "You're right, Agent Cooper. I  _am_  a big shot back in Manhattan. I've prosecuted one or two cases in my  _thirty years_ with the Manhattan DAs Office. I certainly know an interrogation when I see one."

Cooper tried a different approach, leaning forward confidingly. "Look, Mr McCoy, we think that Ms Markham knows more about the shooting than she's letting on. If she'd just tell us – "

" Ms Markham knows exactly as much about the shooting as I do," McCoy said. "If you don't believe that then I think she needs legal representation. If you go back in that room, Agent Cooper, I'm going with you. And believe me, you do  _not_  want to be on the wrong side of the table to me in an interview room. Now  _open the door_ , and tell Ms Markham she's free to go."

For a moment, McCoy thought he should perhaps feel guilty at the cowed expression on Cooper's face as he backed down, but then Cooper opened the door and McCoy caught another glimpse of Regan's drawn face. Suddenly he didn't feel guilty at all.

" Ms Markham," Cooper said stiffly, not looking at Regan, "thank you for your help with our investigation. You're free to go."

"I have a few more questions – " Li began to protest.

"No you  _don't_ , Agent Li," Cooper said.

"Come on, Regan," McCoy said.

Regan stood up, leaning against the table for a moment before limping to the door. McCoy waited until she went past him, gaze steady on Cooper in case he thought about changing his mind, then followed Regan toward the front door of the station.

He caught up with her at the doors and took her elbow. "The car's just out front," he said.

In the time they'd been in the police station the early winter dark had fallen and it had started to sleet. McCoy pulled Regan closer, trying to shelter her from the weather, and steered her to the passenger side of the car.

Regan leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. She didn't move or speak as McCoy dashed back to the driver's side and got in. He started the car, turned the heater to full, and took the map Mary Grafton had drawn him from his pocket.

Trooper Grafton was better at giving directions than she was at standing up to cranky lawyers. McCoy navigated the dark streets of Carthage to the address she'd given him. When he pulled up Regan opened her eyes.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Doctor's," McCoy said.

Regan rolled her head on the headrest and looked at him. For a minute he thought she was going to argue again, but she nodded wearily. "Fine."

Mary Grafton had said she'd call ahead to make sure Doctor Graham was waiting for them and McCoy guessed the old man smoking a cigarette on the front steps of the doctor's office was him. McCoy felt a twinge of guilt at the memory of how he'd stood over Grafton, at the enjoyment he'd got from forcing her to back down. _Unreasonable to expect her to ignore instructions from a ranking BCI agent – even if they were instructions that pissed me off!_ He hoped she wouldn't catch too much grief.

Doctor Graham introduced himself as ' Mike' and let them into his office. McCoy was left to sit in the waiting room while Regan was ushered into the surgery.

He picked up a decade-old  _National Geographic_  and leafed through it. He could hear voices faintly through the door: Graham's gravely rasp and Regan's lighter tones. Then Regan's voice rose in a yelp of pain. McCoy tossed the magazine aside and moved to a chair closer to the door.

The voices were still indistinct but he could catch a few words.

"Looks like … hurt," Graham said.

"Like a sonofabitch," Regan said dryly, and they both laughed.

"Breathe … hold – good. And … pain?"

"Yeah … but not ..."

"I don't … see your own … to the city ... And if you ... nature ... pressure … seriously," Graham said.

"Yes," Regan said. "I know."

"Do … painkillers?" Graham asked her.

"They … hospital …" Regan said. "Percocet."

"How many?" Graham asked.

"Three."

" … left?"

"Three," Regan said.

McCoy could hear Dr Graham's snort clearly through the door. "If Mary … lawyer, I'd think … toughing it out. Take one … any sleep ... need rest."

"Not arguing," Regan said.

"You were … today?" Graham asked. After a long silence McCoy heard Regan murmur agreement. "Is it true?" Graham asked.

"What?" Regan asked.

"Did she … blood?"

Another long silence. "Yes," Regan said at last.

For a few minutes they talked so softly McCoy couldn't make anything out, and then he heard steps coming toward the door.

He moved back to his original chair and grabbed the nearest magazine before Regan and Dr Graham could come out of the surgery. He was pretending to be engrossed in an article on hot spring colours for 1999 when the door opened. Regan didn't seem to notice but when McCoy caught Dr Graham's gaze the old doctor raised his eyebrows with a wry smile.

"I don't have my cheque-book," Regan said. "Can you invoice me?"

"I think the DA's Office can cover this," McCoy said, dropping the magazine. "It seems work-related to me." He stood up and took out his wallet. "I'll see you in the car, Regan."

He waited until she was outside, taking his time filling in the credit card authority slip. When the door had closed behind Regan and McCoy was sure she couldn't overhear him, he asked Dr Graham: "How is she?"

"How she is – is my patient, even if you  _are_ paying the bill," Graham said, his brown eyes shrewd.

"All right, but is there anything I should know?" McCoy said. "Is there something I should look out for, to – I don't know – call 9-11?"

"If she stops breathing, I'd take that seriously," Graham said.

"Don't stonewall me, doctor," McCoy said brusquely. "I've grown used to detecting it in three decades with the Manhattan DA's Office – and no more tolerant of it."

"All those years a lawyer and you haven't grasped doctor-patient confidentiality." Graham said.

"All those years a doctor and you're still not familiar with the Hippocratic Oath," McCoy retorted. "You're going to send an injured woman off into the night without telling me what's wrong with her?"

Graham gave him a steady, assessing stare. "I guess that big-city lawyering  _has_  taught you something," he said at last.

"The Manhattan DA doesn't hire any dummies," McCoy said. "Now tell me, how's she doing?"

"Look, Mr McCoy, I wouldn't let her get in the car if I thought she was going to need an ICU," Graham said. "I'm old, and I live in the armpit of nowhere, but I'm still a doctor. Her ribs are cracked. She's bruised to hell-and-gone. But I don't expect her to die in the night."

"Well, that's good to know," McCoy said sarcastically. "If not exhaustively informative."

"She'll mend. After all, she's come through worse," Graham said, pulling on his coat. "She's one hell of a tough lady. You caught yourself a survivor."

"Oh, she's not –  _we're_  not – we work together," McCoy said. "We work together." He finished paying the doctor's bill and turned to the door.

" Mr McCoy," Dr Graham said, and McCoy stopped. "You take care of that girl."

"I thought you said she'll be all right?" McCoy asked, perplexed.

"And  _I_  thought the Manhattan DA didn't hire dummies," Dr Graham said. He fished his cigarettes from his coat pocket and flicked off the light. "Good night, Mr McCoy. Drive safely."

McCoy accepted his dismissal and headed for the car.

As he started the engine and they pulled away into the night McCoy glanced in the rear-view mirror to see Graham standing on the steps of his office again, cupping his hands to light a cigarette against the wind. Then they rounded a bend and the doctor was gone.

They drove in silence for a few minutes.

"The doctor said you'll be fine," McCoy said at last.

"Should I say I told you so?" Regan said, weary amusement in her voice.

"I usually discourage it in my ADAs," McCoy said, "but I'll make an exception this time."

Regan chuckled softly. "Listen," she said "I'm going to take one of these pills. I won't be able to spell you on the driving. But I don't think I could anyway."

"It's okay," McCoy said. Regan fumbled a bottle of pills from her pocket and swallowed one, then cranked the seat back. McCoy drove in silence, navigating the country roads that would lead them to the highway. The wind tossed sleet against the car in gusts and the headlights lit up sheets of white as often as the dark road ahead.

When the clock on the dash told him a quarter hour had passed, McCoy cleared his throat. "The BCI agents kept you a long time," he said. "What did they want to know?"

Regan opened her eyes and hitched herself up a little in her seat. "What?" she asked groggily.

_The percocet is hitting her_ , McCoy thought.  _Good_.  _I might get a few straight answers for once._ He repeated his question.

"I said something stupid at the McMillan house," Regan said drowsily.

"What?" McCoy asked.

"I told Rollins," Regan murmured. "I told him, he should have given her a chance to surrender. They – Cooper, Li – wanted to know what I meant."

"What did you mean?"

"I told them I was upset over the baby," Regan said. " Therese's baby. You know, being as I am a girl, we feel that kind of thing more … more deeply."

"That's what you told them, or the truth?" McCoy asked.

Regan shrugged, and yawned hugely. "She shot a police officer dead," she said when she could talk. "The other officers returned fire. That's what I told them. What I might have said at the scene? Everybody was upset."

"Before, you seemed sure that they were looking to stir something up," McCoy said. "When we got there. Do you think – ?"

"It doesn't help anybody to get into that," Regan interrupted. "Rollins and Harris did what had to be done. Like my Gran-Da always said: 'If a man draws down on you, you gotta put him in the ground'." She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat. "Gotta … put him in the ground."

"He was a cop, your grandfather?" McCoy asked.

"Great-grandfather," Regan said, voice trailing away.

"Your great-grandfather was a cop?"

"He was  _the_  cop," Regan murmured. "He was  _the_  cop. Why I … went …" Her voice trailed away.

After a few moments McCoy glanced away from the road long enough to see her sound asleep. In the dimly lit interior of the car, with the unmarked side of her face towards him, she looked uninjured.

_She's come through worse_ , McCoy thought.  _She's tough. She's a survivor._

Repeating Dr Graham's reassurance to himself, he drove on through the night.

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	13. Grief Is A Word To Describe The Absence Of Feeling

Regan drifted in a dark river of drugged sleep, dreams brushing past her like submerged logs in the sluggish stream. She opened her eyes and saw the windscreen wipers slapping back and forth against the sleet battering the car, opened them again and the car was stopped. She turned her head to see a burger joint's neons flashing against the night and then she was gone back into the dark.

Later, she had no idea how much later, the car was stopped again and McCoy was calling her name, his hand on her arm.

"Regan," he said again. "C'mon, wake up."

"Yeah," she mumbled, pushing herself up a little in the seat. "I'm up. We there?"

"No," McCoy said. "The weather is pretty bad – going's been slow."

Regan looked out the window at the freezing rain beating down. Beyond the curtains of rain she could see a motel sign. "You want to stop?"

"I think it's safer," McCoy said. "I'm going to go in and see if they have a couple of rooms." He reached into the back seat and handed Regan a paper bag. "I got you some food. It's probably cold, but I didn't want to wake you."

"It's fine," Regan said groggily. She opened the bag as McCoy pulled on his coat and then dashed across the parking lot to the motel office. The burger  _was_  cold, as were the fries, but the smell was still enough to make Regan's stomach twist with a hunger so fierce it bordered on nausea. She took a small bite, forcing herself to eat slowly. After only a few mouthfuls the edge was off her hunger and the rubbery burger began to taste revolting but she persisted until she'd eaten most of it. With the engine off the car chilled quickly and by the time Regan had given up on the burger she was shivering with cold. She folded her arms across her stomach and hunched up, staring at the pattern the rain made on the windscreen. She didn't notice McCoy heading back across the car park and when he yanked open the car door and dived back in out of the rain she was badly started.

"They've got  _a_  room," McCoy said, brushing raindrops from his hair. "Twinshare."

Regan blinked at him for a moment, trying to slow her pounding heart. "Do you want me to offer to sleep in the car?" she said at last.

McCoy laughed. "No, and I'm not going to offer to either. Come on. I'll get your bag."

Regan followed him across the parking lot to the room.

It was as cold inside the room as outdoors. Regan hesitated by the door as McCoy tossed his bags on one of the beds and hers on the other, and hunted for the radiator. While he tinkered with it she went slowly to the bed with her bag on it and unzipped her duffel.

The pain in her side was returning, but in a dull and distant way. More oppressively, Regan felt cold, and tired, and possessed by a powerful longing to be in her own apartment in her own bed by herself.

On the grey Seattle day Regan had stood up from her couch and walked into the kitchen and thought  _I have to get the hell out of here_ , there had been plenty of places she could have chosen, some even further away than New York. She'd considered them: small towns in Alaska, remote hamlets in the Appalachians.  _I have to get the hell out of here_ , she'd thought, desperate to wrap solitude around herself, as if by becoming unknown she could herself  _unknow,_ couldwipe the slate of her past clean – and keep it that way.

Small town life, however, was something she knew a little about.  _No way to be unknown in a small town._  Big cities, however – they were very different.

Regan had picked New York, biggest of the big cities, to vanish into, to lose herself in the anonymity of the crowds. It had worked, too – for a while. It worked as long as she stayed safely buffered by the masses, as long as she was one more face in the crowd, as long as no-one came close enough to her to get a clear look. She had no hobbies. She had no social crowd. She had no friends. As for colleagues from the DA's Office – she'd worked hard to keep them at arm's length, on the other side of the glass wall she liked to imagine surrounded her and kept her safe.

The last month had left that strategy in tatters. At the time, battered by the Firenze case and its consequences, Regan had felt only relief to let down her guard for a moment and know there was someone to watch her back.

_Someone._ That was disingenuous.

_It wasn't Arthur Branch whose disapproval reduced me to tears. It wasn't Lennie Briscoe whose phone-call got me out of bed at midnight. It wasn't Elliot Stabler or Finn Tutuola who saw me fraying at the edges after that bruising – literally **and**  metaphorically – confrontation with Gervits. And it wasn't Ed Green or Ben Strickland at the hospital._

The case and its aftermath had pushed first McCoy, and then Regan herself, to breaking point. She had been unable to keep her distance when McCoy's call had woken all her instincts of  _partner needing help_. With the barriers she'd set between them breached, Regan had not been able to bring herself to push McCoy away when she in turn had found herself at the end of her strength.

_Now I remember that there's always a price_.

A week back at work and she had worked hard to restore an arm's length distance between them – but in the thirty hours since they'd left the city it had become harder and harder. There was no urgent phone-call, no court date, no meeting to rush off to when McCoy asked a question she didn't want to answer. There was no refuge of her own tiny apartment at the end of the day where she could sit still and silent and think of as little as possible. McCoy was an expert prosecutor: he was not easy to side-track or mislead.

His constant attention felt to Regan like a searchlight pinning her against the wall. It was exhausting. She struggled to deflect, to distract, to divert him, and so far she was still holding him at arm's length.

_But my arms are getting tired._

_Just so tired._

"I think that's got it," McCoy said, standing up. "We should get some warmth soon."

Regan nodded. She felt as if she'd never be warm again. The cold had seeped into the very marrow of her bones.

McCoy was standing in front of the heater and she'd have to shoulder him aside to get close to it, so she folded her arms and sat down on the bed.

"So what do you think today's – events – will mean for our case?" McCoy asked her.

"I think sh-sh-sh-sh – " Regan's teeth chattered and she clenched her jaw for a moment, tried again. "She was cl-cl-cl-clearly – "

"Regan, you're freezing, come here." He made room for her beside the radiator. Regan stood beside him, holding her hands out to the warmth, but her shivering didn't stop. McCoy took her hands and rubbed them between his own. "Why don't you take a hot shower – it might warm you up," he said.

Regan nodded, slowly pulling her hands free. She grabbed her shower-kit and night-clothes from her bag and headed into the bathroom.

She was adept at stripping and showering without so much as accidentally glancing at the mirror and tonight was no different. The warm water  _did_ drive away the chill, and some of the fogginess left by the painkiller.

Regan was dressed in her tracksuit pants and the threadbare Garfield T-Shirt she'd slept in her whole adult life and towelling her hair dry before she faced her own reflection.

From the neck down she still looked pretty much like the girl Robbie had married.  _Maybe a little thinner_. But the face that looked back at her – that was a woman Robbie had never seen.

_Never will see_.

She ran her hand over the faded cartoon cat on her stomach. Robbie had never stopped complaining about her irrational fondness for this particular shirt.  _Fool-proof contraception_ , he'd called it more than once.

_Apparently not_ , she'd eventually been able to reply, smoothing the well-worn fabric over her swollen stomach.

And then suddenly Regan was crying so hard her knees buckled. She turned the hot and cold taps on full bore to keep McCoy from hearing the noisy sobs that doubled her over.

_Just reaction_. She couldn't breathe. She was crying so hard she couldn't breathe  _with a bullet in her chest_ and couldn't keep her feet _with the blood coursing slick down her belly_  but found herself kneeling on the floor with her hands clasped over her mouth trying not to scream  _or hear the screaming_.

_Just reaction. Meaningless, physiological reaction. Nothing else. Nothing more_.

She had no idea how long it was before she could get to her feet, throat swollen and aching, and turn off the taps. Her face was blotchy with tears where it wasn't scabrous from her battering, her eyes red and puffy. She did her best with cold water and a handtowel, then rubbed the cream they'd given her at the hospital over the healing grazes on her cheek and mouth.

_A few more weeks, I'll be good as new._

_Good as new_.

_Just so tired._

When she came out of the bathroom, the only light left on in the motel room was the bedside lamp by her bed. McCoy was to all appearances asleep. Regan tiptoed past him and slipped under the covers of her bed, switching the light off and pulling the blankets up over her head.

Tears threatened again. She pressed her face into the pillow to muffle any noise she might make.  _Just reaction._

Outside the room, trees were thrashing in the wind. Regan tried to remember the last time she'd heard the noise of wind in trees from her bedroom.  _Seattle_.  _Listening to winter storms sweep over the city and the big old fir in the yard shaking back and forth. Robbie worrying that it would come down on the house. Me telling him it would never happen._

She fingered the hem of the soft, worn T-shirt, trying to recapture the memory of those nights.  _Robbie always lay on the right side of the bed. His arm would be under my shoulders._

She couldn't feel it.  _Not anymore_. Once upon a time, she had been able to make that memory vivid and clear, had been able to close her eyes and drift off to sleep in the arms of memory. Regan didn't know exactly when she'd stopped being able to do that, and it didn't seem right that she couldn't remember. That was the day she'd truly, finally lost him, and it seemed wrong not to know when that was.

Her eyes filled with tears again. She pressed her face harder against the pillow. Eventually she fell into an uneasy doze.

_Blood on the floor. Her pulse loud in her ears. The gun heavy._

Wake up, Regan.

_Robbie crying and screaming. He's in so much pain. Crying out for his mother, who has been dead six years. Crying out for her. Help me, oh god, help me, El, help me, it hurts, oh god, it hurts!_

Regan, wake up.

_There's Therese McMillan, with her semi. She shoots and shoots and shoots. Anita Van Buren shoots back but Edward Walters has her by the throat and all her shots go wide. Regan screams for Marco to help her, but he shrugs and holds up hands bound round and round with red tape. Sorry, partner, he says._

_She's on her own._

Wake up!

_It's a couple of seconds before she knows she's been hit. First it's the feeling like she's swallowed an ice cube and it's somehow lodged in her belly. Then the slick heat of blood. Then the pain._

_Go down and you're gone. But she can't stand up. Dimly past the screaming she hears knocking on the door. She turns her head and sees the closed inside of the door of her office, shaking in its frame with the force of the fists pounding on it._

_Regan, let me in! Will you goddammit let me in!_

_The voice is familiar but the screaming is driving everything out of her head._

_Regan! Let me in!_

_If he'd stop screaming, maybe she could, but he's screaming and she can't keep her feet and the gun is so heavy and she's so tired -_

"Wake up!"

With a gasp Regan found herself in a lamp-lit motel room, not  _a room that's supposed to be safe but had blood on the floor_. She was clammy with sweat. She heaved herself up on her elbows to drag herself faster from sleep. "I'm up," she said thickly, coughed and swallowed hard. "Is it morning?"

"No." McCoy was sitting on the side of her bed, in singlet and pyjama pants, his hand still on her shoulder after shaking her awake. His hair was flat on one side and sticking out on the other, but even bad bed-head couldn't make Jack McCoy look silly. "That was one hell of a dream you were having."

Regan sat up further. The clock radio read 3.07 am. "Sorry," she said.

McCoy ran his hands over his face, scrubbing sleep away, and then combed his fingers through his hair. "That's not what I meant," he said. "Are you okay?"

"Sure," Regan said, hoping McCoy couldn't hear her heart pounding.

"Because you didn't seem okay," McCoy said, and gave Regan the look that had made uncountable witnesses inexplicably decide to tell the truth they had concealed until then. "Regan?"

_Robbie crying. The gun heavy. Cold in her gut. Dark at the edge of her vision._

"Can we not?" she said breathlessly, sitting all the way up in her bed.

McCoy looked at her for a minute. "Sure," he said at last, patting the bedspread by her knee. "Let's not, and say we did. Want a drink?"

"At minibar prices?"

"Let's live a little." He grinned.

"Sure," Regan said.

The radiator had finally heated the room, and Regan got out of bed as McCoy searched for glasses. She padded across the room to the window and twitched the curtain aside. The glass showed her her own battered face reflected, and then as she leaned closer, the tossing bare branches outside.

_Nothing that happens in this room is real_.

Regan knew it was nonsense, but nonetheless she was visited by the conviction that this motel room was outside the world, outside time, that she could say anything, hear anything, and tomorrow they would get dressed and get in the car and it would all disappear into the dreamworld lit by a bedside lamp.

"Penny for them," McCoy said just behind her, making her jump. She looked over her shoulder to see him holding out a glass towards her. The familiar odour of cheap scotch made her eyes water a little.

"I was just looking at the weather," she said. "I was pretty out of it last night, I didn't notice how bad it was. It looks pretty wild out there."

McCoy stepped closer to peer over her shoulder. For a moment he was so close to her she could feel the heat of his body against her back, sharp contrast to the frigid windowpane beneath her fingers. She could smell the scotch and, more faintly, McCoy's own warm male scent. She could even imagine for an instant that he was close enough for her to hear his heartbeat.

Regan blinked. Her eyes refocussed on the reflective windowpane., and she realised McCoy wasn't looking out the window at all, but at her. She met his reflected gaze and he gave her a tiny smile. "Penny for them," he said again, gently.

"I was just thinking about all the things I never hear any more," she blurted. "Like wind in trees."

"Not even in Central Park?"

"When do I get – when do you  _give_  me – time to go to the Park?" Regan snorted.  _If I turned around right now I'd be in his arms_ , she realised. She stayed facing the window. "I miss – I mean, I guess I'm not such a big-city girl."

"I've never lived anywhere that wasn't a city," McCoy said. " Chicago, New York … I don't think I'd do well in the country."

"Think of all the open space for you to crash your motorcycle," Regan teased.

"Appealing," McCoy said. "But I can't really see myself as the County Attorney for Herkimer."

Regan laughed. "That's just a failure of imagination," she said.

"Where do you see yourself?" McCoy asked.

" County Attorney for Herkimer?" she said.

McCoy chuckled, and stepped back a little, giving Regan room to turn around. When she did, he held the glass of scotch out to her. She took it and slipped past him, going to sit cross-legged on her bed and sipping at the thin liquor.

"You grow up in the city?" McCoy asked casually.

Regan shook her head. "Suburb. Then small town.  _Real_  small town." She fought a yawn. The sleep she'd caught, first in the car and then here, had done little to lighten the heavy pall of exhaustion that and weighed her down all week.

"And your great-grandfather, you said he was a cop? Small town? Big city?"

"Does it matter?" Regan asked.

"My father put in thirty-one years on the streets of Chicago's south-side. I sometimes wonder if he'd have been the same man if he'd been walking a beat in Appleton." He must have seen Regan's incomprehension, and explained: "Smaller town. You don't know Chicago?"

"Never been," Regan said. "Never been anywhere, much."

"But you'll remedy that, when you get that red convertible," McCoy said.

Regan looked sharply at him, expecting mockery, but his smile was without malice. "Yeah, maybe," she said. "Maybe. Your father – tough as they come?"

"Yeah," McCoy said. An expression flickered across his face that Regan couldn't read.

"He  _would_  have been the same man," Regan said. "Gran-Da – never a big city cop. He was – he never said cop, he was a lawman his whole life, he was still deputised when he died. He had a gun and badge back in the days when Washington was still the wild west in a lot of places – and in a lot of those places he  _was_  the law. He was the hardest man I ever met."

"Did you know him well?" McCoy asked.

_A man as big as a mountain gets out of the red truck outside her parent's house. He looks at Regan playing in the yard with her younger sister and she thinks that his eyes are as cold and clear as spring water. Later she'll come realise he'd made his decision in that moment, although she'll never understand why._

"Not really," Regan said.

"Before, in the car," McCoy said, "what you said - it sounded like he was a source of advice to you."

_"If a man draws down on you, put him in the ground_ "  _The old man's voice is crackly with age but his eyes are fierce. "You hear me? You hear me, girl? **Put him in the ground**."_

_And the gun is so heavy and she's so tired and all she can hear is the screaming and his voice, telling her what to do, and he's always been her only guide._

**_Put him in the ground_ **

Regan said something, anything, not hearing her own voice or even knowing if she was making sense, trying to string words together into sentences so McCoy wouldn't know that she was  _in a room that's supposed to be safe_  but  _he's screaming_  and  _the blood_ …

She blinked hard and took a gulp of the scotch in her glass. McCoy was looking at her expectantly and she realised he had asked a question.

"Sorry?" she said.

"I said, where was it?" McCoy asked, and when Regan still looked blank, he clarified: "That old house he lived in. Where you lived. Where was it?"

" Markham's Corner," Regan said.

" Markham's Corner? As in, 'Regan Markham'? Named after your family?"

"Named after Gran-Da," Regan said. "It's less impressive than it sounds, though. It's off the Crown Pacific Mainline and it's basically a general store and post-office run out of someone's living room. The house is solid, though. I bet it's still there."

"Your Gran-Da?" McCoy asked. "Still there?"

"He – " Regan said, and then the words dried in her mouth.

_I don't know what to do, Gran-Da. I don't know how to do this. What do I do? Gran-Da, what do I do? She knows she can't expect an answer from the plain grey headstone in front of her but she pauses all the same. She wishes he was there to tell her what to do. At the same time she nurses the fear that she could never be strong enough to follow his advice. She's desperately grateful he isn't there to see her fail. She's desperately ashamed to be grateful he isn't there to set her a standard she can't meet._

"Regan?"

"He died," Regan said distantly. She knocked back the rest of her scotch. "I shut up the house, after."

"Maybe you'll live in it, one day," McCoy said.

To her horror Regan felt her eyes fill with tears. She tried to blink them back but a sob forced its way up from her throat and then she was crying uncontrollably. She dropped her empty glass onto the bedspread and covered her face with her hands, fighting to win back her self-control.  _Just reaction, meaningless, physiological …_ She felt the bed give a little as McCoy say down next to her.

"Hey, hey, come on," he coaxed gently, putting his hand on her knee. "It can't be that bad. And if you really don't like it, you could always sell it."

It took her a minute to follow his joke. When she did, a snort of laugher pushed aside her sobs. She wiped her eyes and looked up to see McCoy regarding her with apparently genuine bemusement.

"You're right," she said, and sniffed. "The kitchen window needs new sashes, but really that's a minor matter." She gave McCoy the best smile she could with her lower lip still wanting to quiver.

He gave her knee a squeeze and returned her smile, letting her see warm concern beneath the theatrical confusion he had assumed to break her mood. The ache in her chest eased a little.

"I'm just tired," she told him. "Just tired." And if that was not entirely the truth, the jaw-cracking yawn that followed her words proved it wasn't a lie, either. Her eyelids drooped. "I guess it's true what they say about mixing drugs and alcohol…."

"You okay?" McCoy asked, a little sharply. Regan wondered if there were previous ADAs unknown to her whose unfortunate fates had included accidental overdoses from prescription medication.  _Sometimes it feels like that everything bad that could ever happen to anybody has happened to someone who used to sit in my office_ , she thought.

"I certainly shouldn't operate any heavy machinery," Regan said, although she thought the exhaustion that had dropped over her like a cloak of lead was probably a greater contributing cause. "But I hardly need a stomach pump."

"Why don't you lie down," McCoy suggested. "Get a few more hours sleep. We don't need to be on the road at the crack of dawn."

"To sleep …" Regan murmured, remembering McCoy's words to her. "Perchance to dream." She didn't want to sleep. She didn't want to dream.

Somehow, though, she was lying down, McCoy drawing the bedclothes up over her shoulder. She pushed the blankets away, sliding down into sleep and trying to fight it. "No," she murmured, trying to open her eyes. She felt McCoy's hand brush gently over her hair, so lightly she might have imagined it, and then the bed shifted as he stood up and the motion rocked her back into  _blood_  and  _screaming_.

She fought her way back to wakefulness.  _Don't leave me here in the dark, with the screaming, don't leave me alone –_ "Jack!" she said, struggling to keep her eyes open.

"I'm here," he said. He sat back down on the edge of the bed and put his hand over hers. As he did Regan realised she could hear the wind in the trees again, could hear her own heartbeat thrumming in her ears. Could _not_  hear screaming.

Floating on the edge of sleep she had an insight of dream-like clarity. Since the second the shot-gun had gone off, she had been drowning in  _screaming_  and  _blood_  – except when McCoy's voice, McCoy's touch, banished the past.

She would have liked to believe that was meaningless. She would have liked to pretend indifference, would have liked to keep him on the other side of the glass wall she imagined surrounding her.

_The problem with glass is you get cut to ribbons when it breaks._

She couldn't say  _Don't leave me alone_. She couldn't say  _you make the screaming stop_. She couldn't say  _I'm only certain where I am when I'm with you._

"Jack," she said, one word to carry the burden of everything she couldn't,  _couldn't_ ever, say, and closed her fingers tightly around his.

"I'm, here, Regan," he said again.

She took his words down into the dark.

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	14. That Feeling Of Waking And Finding You There

Regan woke slowly.

Used to starting awake from  _screaming and gunfire and can't breathe can't breathe can't breathe_ , she drifted gently up from soft darkness, barely aware of the exact moment she crossed the boundary between sleep and wakefulness.

The first thing she was aware of was that her side was less sore than it had been the day before. Taking a normal breath hardly hurt at all.

The second was that she felt rested.

The third was that she could hear a heartbeat that was not her own.

Her head rested on McCoy's chest. His arm encircled her shoulders. Regan didn't know whether he had gathered her into his arms as she slept, or if they had each unconsciously moved toward the other in the depths of the night, but she certainly couldn't complain McCoy had taken advantage of her. Her own arm was stretched over McCoy's chest, her legs tangled in his. In fact, they lay as closely entwined as lovers.

_I should be embarrassed_ , Regan thought, but it was a purely cerebral thought, one with no emotional charge.  _Here I am in the world's oldest T-shirt and sweatpants snuggled up to Jack McCoy, Manhattan EADA, office Lothario and alpha lawyer of New York._

_I can't even begin to list all the different ways in which this is a catastrophe._

The thought was abstract, distant. Lying in Jack McCoy's sleeping embrace didn't feel catastrophic. It felt …

_Still._

Regan felt  _still_ , as if the maelstrom that she had been battling simply to keep her feet for so long had suddenly stopped.

Outside the motel room, the wind was still howling. Regan could hear the trees whispering to each other as the gale tossed them back and forth. Occasional gusts of rain beat against the window. Here inside, everything was quiet. The radiator hissed faintly. McCoy's chest rose and fell gently beneath her cheek.

Regan closed her eyes again and listened to his heartbeat.  _Perhaps that's why I didn't dream_ , Regan thought.  _How could the noise of memory compete with a living heart?_

The roar of the shotgun had torn Regan apart as efficiently as if she herself had been the target. Fragmented, adrift between different horrors, between past and present, she had barely known who and where she was. It had taken all her strength to move from moment to moment, a ferocious effort of concentration to stay where she was, to stay  _when_  she was. It was like walking through a blizzard, blind beyond a few feet, ice flaying layers from her skin.

The storm outside might still be raging, but for the moment the storm within her was quieted. There was no  _blood_. There was no  _screaming_. The relief was so great tears came to her eyes. It was like the end of chronic pain: only now, feeling peace flow through her body, could Regan appreciate how unbearably tight the tension inside her had been wound. Her body, which had for so long now felt like an adversary in the difficult business of living, apt to involuntary reactions of irrational terror and rage, prone to aches and pains and heart-stopping midnight awakenings, her body was hers again. There was no enemy army of panic or pain rampaging through her nerves or lurking ready to ambush. There was only Regan, head to toe.

She drew an easy, painless breath, opened one eye and peeked up at McCoy's sleeping profile.

In her experience, sleep usually smoothed personality away from a person's face, but the lines of irony and humour, the traces of a lifetime's passionate argument and determination, which were so evident when McCoy was awake still marked his face in repose. He slept quietly, still and silent, as if he could wake easily and completely at any moment.

Regan thought about tactfully slipping from McCoy's embrace while he was still sleeping but the arm around her, the hand cupping her shoulder, held her too firmly.

Instead she lay still and closed her eyes again. She could have this moment, this moment when she knew what moment it was, this moment without pain or fear.

Regan knew she could make a longer list of reprieves if she had been so inclined. She could have added things she  _did_  feel, rather than simply those she did not.

_Danger, Will Robinson._

Those were things she did not deserve and could not have, and so she would not want them.

But she could have this moment. She could have the moment after it.  _That's all I want. That's all I ask. That's a reasonable, moderate request to make of the universe. One moment. The moment after it. That's all._

Listening to the beat of another person's heart and the sound of the wind in the trees, both sounds she hadn't heard since she stopped being the woman she'd always believed herself to be, Regan slipped back into sleep.

…. ….

McCoy always woke quickly and completely. He didn't know anymore whether it was the result of years catching majors on night call-out or whether it was an inherent tendency that had given him a natural advantage in his job.

This morning was no different. He went from sleep to wakefulness on a single breath.

In the next breath he realised he was not in bed alone. Regan lay curled against him, her head pillowed against his shoulder.

McCoy looked down at her. The clock by the bed showed the time as 9:23, but Regan slept as deeply as if it were still the dark hours before dawn. Even with her body relaxed in sleep, her strength was evident in the arm flung across his chest, in the solid muscles of her shoulder beneath his hand. The wrist of her outstretched arm was still purple and red where Walters had bound her and McCoy knew her ankles and neck showed the same marks. Traces of older injuries pocked her arm with white scars, clustered around her elbow.  _She looks more like a soldier than a lawyer._

_She looks like a cop._

_She's one hell of a tough lady, Doctor Graham had said. You caught yourself a survivor._ McCoy couldn't but agree.

At the same time, the complete abandon with which Regan slept lent her an air of vulnerability.

He'd seen the same contrast in her before. After she'd played Gervits to get the location of their suspect, for example.

_And yesterday_.

Regan's face had been grey with shock and she had clearly been lost somewhere in her head, somewhere she still wore a gun on her hip, but she'd still managed to throw McCoy down and keep her body between him and the gun. The body pressed over his had been unyielding. When he had taken off his shirt the night before McCoy had seen bruises on his shoulder from Regan's relentless grip.

It would be an exaggeration to say she had saved his life – Therese McMillan had had only one target.  _But those are just circumstances. They don't say anything of her intentions._

It would have been entirely reasonable and understandable for Regan to have taken cover behind the car.  _But she didn't_. McCoy's safety had been her concern, regardless of any risk to herself, regardless of her injuries and the pain it must have caused her to tackle him hard to the ground.

_She told me near the end of the Firienze case that she'd find a way to meet the cost of any cheque I wrote._

_I should have believed her._

And then last night McCoy had been woken, not by the shrilling phone that usually heralded late night legal emergencies, but by a muffled cry. Turning on the lamp by his bed, he'd seen Regan, still sleeping but rigid in her bed, hands fisted in the blankets, sweat glistening on her face. She'd cried out again, wordless, and when McCoy had called her name, her sleep had been too deep, the nightmare's grip too fierce, for her to hear.

Not until he'd gone over to her and shaken her shoulder, shaken it again as she fought some monster from her subconscious, sleeping face twisted in terror and tears pouring from her closed eyes, not until he'd shaken her a third time, hard, had she finally woken.

Once before, McCoy had wondered what haunted Regan's sleep. That time, she'd turned his question with a joke. Now McCoy had a clearer idea of the kinds of things that might go into a real answer to that question, but last night Regan had asked with an open appeal that was almost begging that he let it lie.

He'd learnt by now that she wasn't a witness to be bludgeoned with direct questions. Any admission she might make would be one tricked from her when her guard was down. And so he'd acquiesced, poured her a drink, and then turned from the minibar to see her gazing out the window at the wild night, hair tousled, her well-worn T-shirt and sweats skimming scanty curves and lean limbs. Her face reflected in the glass was wistful.

Lost in thought, she hadn't heard him come up behind her until he was close enough to feel the heat of her body, to smell the faint medicinal scent of the cream she'd put on her face. He could have reached around her to hand her the glass and she would have been in his arms – but he was not setting the scene for a seduction.

_Current evidence notwithstanding_ , he thought wryly, looking down at the woman sleeping in his arms.

No, he had been setting the scene for an interrogation, albeit not a hostile one. And last night Regan had told him –  _more than she planned to, I think_. He remembered her words, distant and faltering, when he'd asked a few casual questions about the great-grandfather she referenced as the ultimate authority.

_"He rai-" She stops short, fingers pressed against her lips, then tries again. "I lived with him for a while, when my parents – when they – were unwell. He taught me – taught me how to be a cop."_

_McCoy hears the word she bites back._  " _He raised me", she had been about to say.._

_When the parents she learnt in childhood to roll onto their side when they passed out drunk were 'unwell', McCoy thinks grimly._

_"How old were you?" he asks._

_"Twelve," Regan says numbly._

_"Twelve years old and he was training you up?"_

_She shakes her head. "It wasn't like that. He didn't – he didn't have anything else to teach me. He didn't have any other way to be. He taught me – he was trying to teach me how to live, how to live right."_

_Twelve years old, McCoy imagines, and living with an old man who didn't have anything to give her but his gun and his badge._

_"What did he teach you?" McCoy asks, hoping fervently it wasn't the same lessons his father had taught **him**_.

_"How to throw a punch – and how to take one. How to fire a gun, and when to. To back up your partner no matter what. How to face down someone who wants to kill you with your voice and your badge and your authority. To treat everybody the same. That the law treats everybody the same. I don't think he thought he was raising me up to follow in his footsteps. But I did. And I think he was proud."_

_She thinks he was proud. And when McCoy asks her if he's still around, she looks right through him and says: "I was lucky he died in his sleep while I was still in blues."_

McCoy didn't think she even knew she'd said it. She'd blinked and turned when he spoke to her and told him again that the old man had died, and a moment later been in a flood of tears.

They'd stopped quickly, but they'd signalled her exhaustion. She'd fought it, resisted his encouragement to lie down and rest. Barely able to open her eyes, she'd gripped his hand painfully hard.

_Go to sleep. I'm here._ She'd said the same to him, once.  _I'm here._

Even after Regan had slipped into sleep she'd stirred restlessly when he moved away. Eventually, mindful of the long drive ahead of them, McCoy had lain down beside her, hand lightly on her arm, that they might both get some rest.

He didn't remember gathering her into his arms, nor did he remember her nestling against him, but there she was, head resting on his chest, arms about him. He could see the edge of her face as she slept, the lines of strain smoothed away. Sleeping, Regan looked calm, even serene.

_When a person sleeps, you see who they really are_. McCoy could remember his mother saying that. She'd been talking about his father, passed out drunk on the sofa, a note of tenderness in her voice that McCoy had thought completely inexplicable.  _Look at him,_ she'd said,  _his sweet face. The man I married. I can still see him, Jack. He's still in there._

It hadn't filled McCoy with faith in that particular piece of received wisdom. Now, looking at Regan's peaceful face, McCoy wondered if he was looking at who she really was or, like his father, the polar opposite.

Waking up next to a woman was no novel experience for McCoy, but usually as the sequel of a night spent somewhat more pleasantly than in nightmares and tears. Regan was by no means the most agreeable armful he'd ever woken to, lean and even lanky rather than voluptuous. Still, it felt oddly natural to smooth her unruly hair and rest his hand on her back.

_She really could stand to do something about her hair,_ he thought, although truth be told he didn't really mind her unkempt appearance. She'd called her great-grandfather a 'lawman', not a cop, and the word's association with wild-west shoot-outs and sheriffs suited Regan as well. It was easy to imagine her, with her scraped face and her scars, locks of ragged hair poking out from beneath a ten-gallon hat, a star on her breast and six-guns on her hips.  _She even squints when she's thinking_ , he remembered, amused at the image of her narrowing her eyes as she scanned the horizon for cattle-rustlers.

Regan stirred and murmured in her sleep and McCoy realised that, dreamily turning over the mental picture of Regan sauntering into a saloon and drinking Wild Bill Hickok under the table before out-calamitying Calamity Jane, he had absent-mindedly begun to rub the real flesh-and-bone Regan's back, running his fingers along her spine, tracing small circles between her shoulder blades in what could almost be called a caress.

For a moment he was afraid he'd woken her, but she simply sighed and snuggled closer to him.

Inconveniently, his body responded to the familiar circumstance with a wave of heat and an unasked-for stirring. McCoy closed his eyes and tried to will away his involuntary and inopportune reaction to the warm body pressed against his.  _If she wakes up now_ , he thought,  _god knows what conclusion she'll jump to._ The Wild-West-Regan of his imagination narrowed her eyes and put her hands on her guns.

The image did not have the quelling effect he might have hoped for.

After a few futile minutes he gently eased Regan's head from his shoulder and settled her on the pillows. In the bathroom, he turned the shower to  _very_  cold.

When, showered, shaved and dressed, he left the bathroom, Regan was awake, sitting on the side of the bed.

"Morning," he said. "How do you feel?"

"Better," Regan said. "Better. Starving!" Her stomach growled in punctuation.

"I'll see if there's breakfast on offer," McCoy said.

"I'll get dressed."

When he came back to the room after a quick trip across the parking lot to the main building of the motel, Regan was almost ready, dressed, her hair damp, sitting on the bed to put on her boots.

"We're in luck," McCoy told her. "Breakfast is on."

"Excellent," Regan said. She leaned down to put her left boot on and winced.

"Let me," McCoy said quickly. He pulled the desk chair up to face her and sat down, lifting her foot into his lap.

"Thanks," Regan said, as he slipped her boot on and tightened the laces. McCoy frowned, feeling the boot still damp despite a night by the heater.

"You need to get a better pair of these," he said, picking up the other boot and holding his hand out to for her other foot. "The winter can get pretty bad, even in Manhattan. And – you need a thicker coat."

Regan held out her foot to him. "Where's a good place? A&N?"

"We pay you a little better than that, surely!" McCoy said, grinning. He paused in the act of slipping her right boot on, and pulled her sock down a little to see the rope-burns on her ankle. "Do these hurt?"

"Little bit," Regan said, and shrugged. He looked up and saw her half turned away, head down, studying the bedspread.

"Do you mind me asking?" he said.

"Little bit," Regan admitted.

"Why?"

She paused a long moment. "I'm not an exhibit," she mumbled at last.

McCoy looked at her, shocked. "Do I treat you like one?" he asked in disbelief.

"No," Regan said, a reflexive denial, and then more considered: "No. Be - someone else did. I'm sorry."

_Ben Strickland_ , McCoy thought grimly. He eased Regan's sock back up and slipped her boot on, then looked up to see her watching him, a faint smile on her lips.

"What?" he demanded, tightening her laces.

"Nothing," she said gently, almost tenderly. "Thanks for putting on my boots."

He took her hand and drew her to her feet. "I can change a light bulb for you later if you like."

"Leading me to this promised breakfast would do just as well, Prince Valiant," Regan said pointedly, her tone undermined by the smile she couldn't suppress.

Good as it was to see her clear eyed and joking, McCoy thought it was better to see the eagerness with which she set to her waffles when they arrived.

"Taking Lorraine's advice?" he teased.

Regan put her hand self consciously to her hair, and then she realised what he was talking about. She grinned at him, and stabbed another bite of waffle with her fork.

"I didn't need Lorraine to tell me you need a little cushion for the pushin'." she said.

McCoy inhaled a mouthful of coffee and coughed until his eyes streamed. "What did you say?" he demanded when he could speak.

"That's what my mother used to say when I didn't clean my plate," she explained, and at the look on McCoy's face hastily explained "I didn't know what it  _meant_  until a lot later!"

"If I said something like that I'd be the defendant in a sexual harassment lawsuit before I finished the sentence."

"Yeah, double standards suck," Regan said with a cheerful lack of sympathy. "Are you going to eat that?"

McCoy pushed his plate across to her and Regan began to make short work of his left-over bacon. "What's that narc of yours going to say?" he asked. "Seemed to me he liked you skinny."

"It doesn't matter," Regan said acidly, humour suddenly gone from her face, "since 'that narc of mine' is not likely to be asking me out again any time soon. Maybe the Abbie Carmichaels and the Casey Novaks of the world get to set hurdles in front of their fellas. But when you're not the pick of the litter, Jack, you can't expect a nice guy with a good job and a lot of options to keep on calling you up when your boss has threatened his career." Her voice had risen a little. "So I'm not too worried about whether Ben Strickland likes me skinny or fat." She pushed McCoy's plate away hard, almost knocking over his coffee cup.

"Good," McCoy said, unmoved.

"Good? Why, because you need someone guaranteed to be able to work arraignments out of the drunk tank on Saturday nights?" Regan snapped.

"Because you shouldn't be spending time with a man who scares you," McCoy retorted just as sharply.

" _Scares_  me?" Regan said with disbelief. " _Ben Strickland?_ "

"You looked frightened," McCoy said. "On Thursday night in McMurty's. You looked – you  _were_  – scared."

Regan looked down. "I was," she admitted after a moment. "But  _not_ of him."

"Then of what? And don't try and snow me this time," McCoy said.

"Sometimes, Jack, the things that happen to you, they leave marks …" Regan said slowly. She looked up and met his gaze. "Marks on your life. And it isn't as simple as saying it's like this or it's like that. Can you understand that? That I don't have a simple answer for you? That – things – sometimes  _scare_  me, when they aren't scary?"

She held his gaze, and McCoy was the first to look away. He studied the remains of his breakfast for a minute. "So I should have minded my own business," he said.

He was surprised when Regan reached across the table and put her hand over his. "Better we do the wrong thing for the right reason, in my opinion," she said quietly.

"Now you're not thinking like a lawyer," McCoy said. "Intention follows the bullet, remember?"

"See, in my Crim Law 101, the professor was very big on something called  _mens rea_ ," Regan said. "Maybe you've heard of it." She squeezed his hand once more and then let go, leaning back and picking up her coffee cup.

"See, in my house," McCoy mimicked, "my mother was very big on the idea that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Maybe you've heard of it?"

Regan grinned. "Checkmate," she said. "No Supreme Court precedent beats the authority of a mother's proverb."

McCoy began to laugh. When Regan looked at him quizzically, he explained: "Just imagining you in front of the Supremes arguing on needing a little cushion – "

"Nuh-uh!" Regan said, raising a finger warningly, trying and failing to keep her face stern. "Remember the double standard." At the look on his face she began to chuckle and McCoy couldn't help joining in.

"You do realise," Regan said when she could talk, "that if I ever do end up before the Supreme Court I'm going to stand up there and the little green light is going to go on and I'm going to open my mouth and say "Ms Chief Justice and may it please the court – "

" ** _Ms_**  Chief Justice?" McCoy asked.

"By the time I'm likely to be playing for the Supremes – if ever – we'll  _surely_  have got there." Regan wiped tears of laugher from her eyes with a napkin.

"Yeah, that's what I thought when I first graduated law school, too," McCoy said.

"You argued before the Supreme Court?" Regan said, wide-eyed and obviously impressed. McCoy caught himself enjoying her admiration, and then gave a mental shrug.  _So what? It was pretty darn impressive, if I say so myself._   _Nothing wrong with a bit of well-earned admiration._

"A few years back," McCoy said. "Arguing for the right of the Manhattan DA to prosecute a foreign national for a murder committed in a foreign land."

Regan pursed her lips in a silent whistle, eyebrows climbing. "That's a big precedent to set."

McCoy gave a wry smile. "And that's what the Supremes thought."

"You lost?" Regan asked, crestfallen.

"Split decision," McCoy said. He shrugged. "But they don't give points for that."

"What did you say?" Regan asked. "I mean, in the court. What was it like?"

"Like the Court of Appeals in Albany – same kind of format. But scarier," McCoy said.

"And what did you say?"

"I said 'Man has only the rights he can defend,'" McCoy said, not having to think for even a moment to remember. The words rolled off his tongue even years later, and the sense of pride and anxiety, adrenaline and hope returned as well. Regan sat riveted, resting her chin on her clasped hands, until he finished with the ringing paragraph he had practiced over and over in the hotel bathroom the night before the hearing: "And when that law is broken, it is the duty of every officer of any court to rise up in defence of that law, and bring their full power and diligence to bear against the law breaker. Because, man has only those rights he can defend. Only those rights."

He fell silent, and met Regan's gaze. She seemed almost hypnotised, and McCoy felt a tingle of pride and vanity. He knew his argument was taught in more than one law school for the power of its rhetoric –  _if not the strength of its legal underpinnings_  – and that was a source of satisfaction to him, but it could not compete with seeing a living audience in the person of Regan Markham, eyes shining, expression intent. He raised his hands a little from the table, fingers spread wide. "That's it," he murmured.

"And what happened then?" Regan asked breathlessly.

"The light went red," McCoy said dryly, deliberately breaking the spell of words with which he'd bound her. Regan blinked, and gave a gasp of laughter. "The light went red, and an insufficient number of the Justices were convinced."

"If you'd had longer," Regan said with stout loyalty, "you would have got them all."

"Maybe," McCoy said, "but I  _didn't_  have longer. You never get the ideal circumstances in a courtroom, Regan. Your job is to work with what you have. I can't go around patting myself on the back because if I'd been allowed to set the rules of the court I would have had a better chance." He realised he'd raised his voice, and paused, going on in a more moderate tone: "I appreciate your faith in me. But winning  _is_  everything in the courtroom. And the cold truth is, I didn't." He stood up from the table. "I'm going to settle the tab. Then we should get ready to hit the road."

Regan nodded, looking chagrined. About to head to the counter, McCoy stopped. He put his hand on her shoulder and she looked up.

"Loyal sympathy is all very well," he told her. "But if you don't learn from my mistakes, you won't do any better – when your turn in Washington comes."

It took Regan a beat to work out his meaning and then she blushed and ducked her head shyly. McCoy gave her shoulder a squeeze.

"Go pack," he said to her. "We've still got a long way to go."

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The case McCoy refers to, that he argued in the Supreme Court of the United States, was in "Vaya Con Dios". The verdict is not given in the show, so it is not canon for me to suggest McCoy lost – but the precedent would have made some pretty big ripples in the Law & Order legal universe.


	15. That Lonely Sinking Feeling Creeps Up On Me

The wind was still high but the rain had stopped by the time they were packed and ready to leave.

"I'll drive," McCoy said as they walked across the car park, bags in hand.

"Oh, no you won't," Regan said. She pulled the car keys from her pocket and jingled them at him. "Should have kept a closer eye on these! Remember, Jack – 'man has only those rights he can defend'."

"That is very close to sacrilege, Ms Markham," McCoy said sternly.

"I didn't know your words were holy writ, Mr McCoy," Regan said with the same mock seriousness, clicking the central locking and opening the trunk for their bags.

"Then I've obviously neglected your education."

Regan snorted, slamming the trunk. "If I learn any faster my head is going to explode!"

"I think that's technically an occupational health and safety issue," McCoy said. "Outside my area of responsibility." He got in the passenger seat as Regan settled herself behind the wheel.

"Buck-passer," Regan said cheerfully.

"Were you like this when you were married?" McCoy asked.

"Like what?" Regan asked, pulling out onto the road.

"Recalcitrant," McCoy said dryly. "Disobedient."

"Probably," Regan said softly after an odd pause, not looking away from the road. "It's hard to remember."

"Married long?" McCoy asked.

"More than ten years," Regan said.

"He has my sympathy, then," McCoy said. "How did he put up with you for so long?"

"Shift-work," Regan said, with a smile that seemed a little forced. "It's amazing how long you can live with someone without actually seeing them face to face."

"That's funny, because that was my wife's main complaint when she divorced me," McCoy said. "That I came home from work after she was asleep and left before she woke up, that she might as well be a widow."

"She had no idea what she was talking about," Regan said with a vehemence that was almost venomous in its intensity.

"Well, I have to admit, she had a point about my hours – " McCoy started.

Regan cut him off. "She had  _no_  idea." Her voice was very cold and precise.

McCoy turned in his seat to look at her. "Regan?" he said questioningly.

She drove in silence for a long minute, the muscles in her jaw working. Finally she took a deep breath. "I'm not divorced, Jack. I'm a widow."

His face must have betrayed something – shock, embarrassment at his glib remarks to her earlier. Regan gave him a charitable smile. "It's okay, Jack, I was  _almost_  divorced. He was just dragging his feet about signing the papers. Then when it happened – I felt like a fraud. The widow who almost wasn't. Who  _wouldn't_  have been, if I'd had my way. But there I was, favourite guest speaker at PBA benefit dinners, cop's widow, injured cop." She shrugged. "But you asked me what happened. To Robbie. He got shot, is what happened. A lot of other stuff happened first. But in the end, he got shot."

_What where when -_ after so many evasions, McCoy had an answer, an answer that answered nothing.

Prosecutorial training and experience took over.  _Ask an easy question. Ask a question that the witness will think is harmless. Ask a question the witness will answer._

"Why were you getting a divorce?" McCoy asked.

"One thing and other," Regan said. "We married young. And then – when our lives changed – because lives change, you know – we didn't change in the same way. We didn't change together. We couldn't stay together. Or at least, I didn't think we could. Robbie – he wanted to try again. And again. But me … " She shrugged. "Me, I thought we were done."

_Build rapport with the witness. Convince the witness you wouldn't **really**  ask anything too bad, too painful. Too  **dangerous**._

He hesitated, though. After a moment he took a shallow breath and gave Regan a truth in exchange for hers. "She died," he said quietly. "I don't mean – not my wife. We divorced.  _She_  divorced  _me_. But when you asked – what happened to her, the woman who meant to me what Robbie meant to you? She died. A drunk driver ran a red light and killed her."

"Jack, I'm sorry," Regan said, voice warm with sympathy.

"The thing is – " McCoy said. "The thing was, we had been arguing. That day, the day before. We'd been arguing for a while. I thought maybe it was coming apart, maybe  _we_  were coming apart. It made me angry. I was  _angry_  with her. And then she was dead. Before she could leave me, before I could leave her, before I could forgive her or she could forgive me, she was dead."

"What was her name?" Regan asked.

"Her name was Claire Kincaid," McCoy said. "But I think you already knew that."

"I did. I guessed," Regan confessed. "When you said – drunk driver. I'm sorry. Lennie Briscoe told me – about her. I shouldn't have – I shouldn't have pretended I didn't know her name. That was cheap. I'm sorry." She paused. "And I'm sorry about what happened to her. Everyone says she was a nice lady."

"She was  _amazing_ ," McCoy said, meaning it unreservedly, forgetting as he spoke that he had brought up Claire Kincaid as a tactic, and as the words hung in the air it seemed like the ghost of Claire Kincaid was in the car with them.  _I could turn to the back seat and she would be there_ , McCoy thought,  _that glossy black hair that was so soft to touch shimmering as she moved, her eyes, her beautiful eyes alight with that look she got when she looked at me_.  _She would smile that smile she had that made my heart stop, and lean forward, and put out her hand –_

For a heartbeat he could smell her perfume.

He didn't turn around. He didn't want to see the empty seat. These vivid visitations of memory had grown less frequent as time passed, and he no longer spent the days and nights hoping that some stray thought or sound would bring Claire back to him  _even for just one second, please God,_  but he still clung to the illusion when it came.

"I'm so sorry," Regan said softly.

McCoy swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. "From time to time I remember how much I miss her," he said.

"Yeah," Regan said. "Tell me about it." She drove in silence for a few minutes, leaving McCoy to his own melancholy thoughts. When she did speak, her voice was thick, as if clogged with unshed tears. "I think it would have been worse if we had been living together. But I was used to him not being around. It still – it hurt more than I would have thought it would hurt. Just because you're trying to divorce someone doesn't mean you don't – have feelings. For them. And I felt like I shouldn't. Like I didn't have a right to. I didn't want to share a life with him anymore. But I wanted him to have a life, a good one. I didn't want - " She stopped abruptly.

"Was it the job? His job – yours?" McCoy asked. "Two cops – can't have been easy."

"It was – something else," Regan said evasively . "The job came into it. Later. But it was just one of those man-woman, husband-wife things."

"Yeah," McCoy said on a breath of a mirthless laugh. "Tell me about it." He let the silence stretch for another moment, then asked the question he really wanted the answer to. "What happened? How did he die?"

"Badly," Regan said flatly. Her tone was so final that even Jack McCoy, expert prosecutor, Alpha Lawyer of New York, had to accept that the topic was closed.

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	16. I Guess I Believe There's A Point To What We Do

Outside the car the scenery was beginning to change, trees giving way to more and more houses as they passed through larger and larger towns. There was not much traffic on a Sunday morning and Regan kept the car at the speed limit.

She was intent on the road, and McCoy was free to watch her unobserved. The bruises and grazes were noticeably more healed than even a few days previously, and although Regan's mouth was set in a hard line at the moment, the coiled tightness in her bearing was gone. He wondered how many nights she woke in panic, as she had the night before. He wondered how much her short temper, the friability of her self-control, could be attributed to the grinding exhaustion of insomnia.

_Not just this last week, either,_ he thought. She'd never given him a satisfactory explanation for the battering she'd given William Perry after catching him literally red-handed vandalising Serena Southerlyn's house.

_A night spent staring sleepless at the dark_   _has never been known to improve **my**  disposition_, he thought.

_How did he die? Badly._

"Claire was already dead when I got to the hospital," McCoy said quietly. "Oh, they didn't turn off the machines for a couple of days. But – "

_"I want to be there. With her. When – "He fights for self control. "When she dies," he manages at last to say, voice even._

_"I'm sorry, Mr McCoy," the young doctor says. "That's not – I'm sorry, didn't I explain it to you? That's not possible."_

_"Why not?" he demands._

_"She'll be – in what we call a beating heart donation, the donor is taken into the operating theatre still on life support." The doctor clearly doesn't want to be explicit. He doesn't need to be. Although the haze of grief and guilt that has McCoy feeling as if he is wading through concrete fogs his mind, this is one leap of understanding he is able to make instantaneously._

_His imagination shows him exactly what the doctor means, shows him Claire's perfect body stretched on the operating table, the pale skin he caressed so often parted by the surgeon's knife, the spurt of blood …_

_"Oh god." McCoy turns away blindly._

_Behind him as he walks away he hears Liz Rodgers ask the young man to wait a moment. He hears her following him, the hard soles of her sensible shoes echoing in the hospital corridor. McCoy stops at the water cooler and takes his time filling a cup to give himself longer with his face hidden from inquisitive eyes. When he looks up Rodgers is standing between him and anyone passing in the corridor, tactfully half-turned away. "This is how it works, Jack," she says without turning around, gently but firmly. "Her mother has signed the papers. This is how it works, and this is how it's going to happen."_

_"Jesus, Liz! They're going to cut her open while she's alive. And she's going to die in there, she's going to die alone." It's hard for him to force out the admission, but maybe Rodgers can do something, and McCoy would beg her on his knees on the courthouse steps at midday if there's even a chance she can stop this nightmare. "I don't want – I don't want her to die alone."_

_"Jack," Rodgers says, putting her hand on his arm. "Jack, she died in the ambulance."_

"So I don't know," McCoy said, shaking himself free of the past. "I don't know how she died. And it must have been different, for you, because she was killed in an accident, an accident that was someone's  _fault_ , but an accident all the same. And your husband was shot. That must make it different."

"I don't know," Regan said. "You'd have to answer that." She glanced at him. "You're the one who's lost – lost people. For both reasons."

"I don't know what you think you mean by that," McCoy bridled. Regan shot him a glance that told him she saw straight through the lie but she didn't say anything. A silence stretched between them McCoy found uncomfortable. Used to out-waiting defendants and defence lawyers when the occasion demanded, he found himself speaking first. "There are a lot of rumours around the office. You should be smart enough to know that not all of them are true."

"They don't have to be  _all_  true, though, do they?" Regan pointed out. "Or even,  _entirely_  true. Some of them, partly true, would be – bad enough. I mean, tough enough. That's a lot of gravesides to stand beside."

"I can't argue with that," McCoy conceded. "It was – it creeps up on you, you know? It mounts up. And then last year … Last year, I couldn't keep anyone safe, it was like we were under siege. All the time. It's been bad before. Alex Cabot, Mary Fitzgerald. Toni Ricci. But last year – " He shook his head, remembering. "We tried a gang member of a prison gang for murder. I said goodnight to Alex and walked into the subway. She told me later that before I was even out of sight a gang member came up to her, took her by the coat. He was  _that close_  to her. Someone put my name on a death list. Someone shot at us on the courthouse steps. And then – that case." He stopped, rapping his knuckles against the window beside him. "That last case," he said finally. "You know when they found her I had to go. I had to see her. Then that was all I  _could_ see. When I saw her I thought – just for an instant – I had this urge to pick her up and take the tape off her mouth and tell her that it would be all right, that we had found her. But she was dead. And after a second , after that first second, there was no mistaking it. She was just - she was just so dead." He looked out the window so Regan wouldn't see his face even if she looked. " _She_  died badly. If anyone did. If anyone ever did."

"I'm sorry," Regan said again. "I'd tell you – I'd say that it gets better as time goes one, but I don't know anymore how true that is."

McCoy turned back to look at her. "It  _does_  get better as time goes on. It's just – there's more that  _needs_  to get better."

"I can't argue with that," Regan said, echoing his words back to him. She hesitated, and then said in a rush: "Some days it's like I'm living my whole life in that room." Her voice was tight with a strain all-too-familiar to McCoy.

"But you aren't," McCoy said . "Didn't you tell me it's just a moment in time? I guess we both have to just go on hoping that one day that will sink in."

"Maybe it never gets better. Maybe we just learn how to stand up under it," Regan said. She touched the brakes as they came up on a curve, then accelerated smoothly into the straight.

"I used to know how to," McCoy said reflectively. "These things happen and … well, I always had a job to do. I had to put the people who did them in jail. It didn't always work. The drunk driver who ran that red light, he got nowhere near the time he should have. But usually – I  _nailed_  Volsky for Toni Ricci. We got Richard White. That didn't bring Karen Fitzgerald back but I felt like maybe it would have given her some satisfaction, maybe let her rest, you know?"

"Yeah," Regan said softly.

"So that's how I 'stood up under it'," McCoy said. "But what difference does it make, that's the question you have to ask, isn't it? I do everything I can to cement them into their cells or strap them to a gurney when the law will let me, and then I turn around and there's one more of them, and one more girl in the hospital or the morgue. I feel like I'm emptying the sea with a sieve."

"It's like that in uniform too, sometimes," Regan said. "You bust one cranked-up mugger, there are two more tomorrow."

McCoy took the opening. "Is that why you left the police force?"

"I got shot, did I mention?" Regan said, the easy camaraderie dropping from her voice.

"In the arm," McCoy said, nodding.

"What?" Regan said, turning towards him in surprise, then jerking her attention back to the road.

"I saw your elbow," McCoy said. "The scars. That's where you got shot, right?"

"Yeah," Regan said after a pause. "A ricochet, a while back. Blew my elbow to hell and gone. Screwed up the nerves – and I'm a lefty on the range. Now I have a - " She took her left hand from the wheel and held it where McCoy could see it. After a few seconds a fine tremor started in her fingers. "A  _shake_. Not what you want in the person going in the door behind you with a gun in her hand." She put her hand back on the wheel, shrugged. "The docs told me it might get better, with some more surgery, some rehab – but after I left the force I never really saw the point, you know?"

"The way you talk about it, you make it sound more  _recent_ ," McCoy said, surprised. "Like it was the reason you quit."

"I didn't – oh, whatever," Regan said bitterly. "Whatever you want to think, Jack."

He frowned. "What am I supposed to think?"

Regan tightened her grip on the wheel and then heaved a sigh. "There's stuff I don't talk about," she said stiffly. "I'm sorry if that offends you. It's not personal."

"There are a lot of things I never talk about either," McCoy said. "Claire Kincaid is one of them." In fact, that was a lie. Jamie Ross wouldn't have had to ban him from talking about Claire when she'd started setting him up with her single friends if he'd had other topics of conversation.

_The things I don't talk about, I don't talk about._

For a moment, looking at Regan's white knuckles and set jaw, McCoy imagined how he'd react if their positions were reversed.  _If she were asking **me**  questions_  _I didn't want to answer. If she were **my**  boss, asking me questions I didn't want to answer._

He dismissed the momentary qualm.  _She's all Sarah Bernhardt about getting shot in the **elbow**? If that's enough to send her into a tailspin she was never tough enough for the force in the first place. She doesn't know what damage  **is**._

Regan was chewing her lip.  _Quid pro quo_  had worked on her before and McCoy could see it was working on her now.

"It took me off the street," she said at last. "It changed a lot of things in my life – none of them for the better. You can get hurt bad and walk back into your life – you can get hurt a little bit and find you've got no life to walk back into. Just a stupid ricochet, me and Marco standing back from the corner while the hard-covers went in on a no-knock warrant and the next thing I'm looking at the bone of my arm."

"Just plain bad luck," McCoy said.

"I dunno," Regan said, and surprisingly, grinned. "After all, it could have hit me in the head."

McCoy chuckled, and then a thought struck him. "You said – back at Carthage, you said you were in the washroom when the shooting started."

"Did I?" Regan said vaguely. "I must have been thinking of something else."

"Is that what you have nightmares about?" McCoy asked. "Is that what you were dreaming about last night?"

"Dreams..." Regan said. "They don't mean anything."

"Sometimes when we're sleeping we know things we don't understand when we're awake," McCoy said.

To his surprise Regan blushed pink and then scarlet, but she said nothing, only stared ahead at the road as the blood blazed in her cheeks.

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Volsky is the Russian mobster who had ADA Toni Ricci murdered. ADA Karen Fitzgerald is from an episode of SVU, she unsuccessfully prosecuted Richard White for sexual assault, he then sexually assaulted and murdered her. There's no canon to support the idea that McCoy knew anything about the crime or the investigation, but it seems plausible to me that it would have a high profile in the DAs Office.


	17. Irony Oh Irony, You Are The Polar Seed Of Truth

"Sometimes when we're sleeping we know things we don't understand when we're awake," McCoy said.

Regan knew he was talking about dreams and nightmares but what came instantly to her mind was waking that morning with her arms around McCoy and her legs tangled with his.  _No-one can be held responsible for what they do in their sleep_ , she'd thought at the time. But was that true? Did McCoy believe it?

Once again her mind shied away from the thought before it was fully formed, but she felt herself begin to blush deeper and deeper. Desperately, she kept her eyes on the road, hoping McCoy wouldn't notice her face turning the approximate shade of a tomato.

Frantically she sought for something to say to distract him but everything that came to mind led her deeper into the minefield, one way or another.  _Actually, I got shot twice_  …  _Robbie died begging me to help him …. My nightmares are about something worse than any of that …_

"Did you know Dr Graham was Therese McMillan's doctor?" she blurted.

McCoy paused before answering, and Regan realised he was deciding whether or not to let her change the subject. She held her breath.  _Please, please, Jack, please…_

"I could have guessed," McCoy said, and Regan blew out a silent breath of relief. "He's the only doctor in town. I hadn't really thought about it."

"He said something odd," Regan remembered. At the time, it had been one more thing sleeting past her, a lot less important than the effort of will it had taken her to take off her shirt for the old doctor to prod her ribs, than the effort it had taken to make casual conversation about the fresh bruises and the old scars. Now, in retrospect, it seemed interesting enough to maybe distract even the forensically focused Jack McCoy.  _I can hope, anyway_.

"He asked me if she really shot Dawson in cold blood," Regan told him. "And when I said yes, he said that it had been a long time coming."

"What did he mean?"

"I don't know. But you remember – Dawson was the most gung-ho about the whole thing. He had his gun out first. And he  _said_  something to her, just at the end there – I dunno." Regan shrugged without taking her hands from the wheel.

McCoy was silent. When Regan glanced at him she saw his hooded eyes focused on nothing, deep in thought. After a moment he blinked, and said: "It would save a lot of time. You can't run from the truth, Therese. You can walk away from me, but you know I'm right – about you, about that baby in your belly. You know it."

Regan swore softly, the hair on the back of her neck rising. "That's uncanny," she said uncomfortably. "You almost  _sounded_ like him for a second."

"Get over it," McCoy said with some asperity. "Remembering what witnesses say is stock in trade for the courtroom attorney. I've trained my memory for  _years_  to file away exactly what's said. You won't have time to refer to a transcript when you have a witness on the stand on cross and you're trying to break down their story before they have a chance to ask their defence attorney what to say. A little contradiction in a witness's testimony can crack open a case wide as the Grand Canyon. The sooner you learn to do it yourself the better off you'll be."

Regan accepted the rebuke meekly. "Okay," she said. "But don't you agree – it sounded like there was a history there. A  _dislike_. Maybe on both sides."

"So it wasn't suicide-by-cop?" McCoy said.

Regan shook her head impatiently. "It definitely wasn't, Jack. I've seen – more than one. Never seen one with even a loaded weapon, let alone one who shot and killed an officer. Therese McMillan  _murdered_  Bill Dawson, deliberately. And she didn't plan to do it until just at that last minute, either."

"'You know I'm right about that baby'," McCoy mused. "And she said – 'This baby will be born McMillan. Whatever I do, it'll turn out the same. Our blood runs bad'."

"But she didn't always believe it," Regan said. "She didn't terminate the pregnancy. Dr Graham said that he thought she'd been looking for a way to make a fresh start. He said … " she frowned, remembering. "A way to make good from bad, is what he said."

"And those few words from Dawson changed her mind?" McCoy said, sounding incredulous.

"I thought …" Regan said, hesitated and then plunged ahead, "I thought any cop would do. When I saw the gun coming around, I thought she'd decided to take out her grievances on whoever was nearer. But 'a long time coming' … She didn't just murder a  _cop_ , Jack. She killed  _that_  cop."

"She gave up on her fresh start," McCoy said.

"She worked out there's no such thing," Regan said without thinking and then froze, hoping McCoy wouldn't pick up on her words. "Why do you think she told us all that about Timmy?" she asked hastily. "I mean, if we could get some of that stuff admitted – the jury would see it as evidence of premeditation. Do you think she'd given up by then – given up on him?"

"No," McCoy said. He sounded faintly surprised and out of the corner of her eye Regan saw him turn to look at her. "She told us about Timmy because you asked her in the right way. You persuaded her that it was the right thing to do.  _That's_  why."

"Was it the right thing to do?" Regan whispered.

"She saw that he needed to take responsibility for what he did," McCoy said.

"She grew those three boys up," Regan said. "When they'd finally, all of them, when they were finally lost, she must have wondered if there was anything she could do to make her own baby turn out better."

"You really had a handle on her, didn't you?" McCoy asked.

"I didn't have a handle on her picking up that shotgun," Regan said.

"You know that's not what I mean," McCoy said. "The family, the sister, the boys – Regan. That family you told me about – were they the Markhams?"

"The no-good Seattle Markhams?" Regan asked. "No. They were the no-good Seattle Regans."

"But you had a connection with them. You seem – was it the name? Reagan – sounding like Regan?" McCoy asked.

Regan shifted in her seat. "No. It wasn't some sound-alike thing."

"It was something, though, wasn't it?" McCoy insisted. "Regan?"

"If you want to tell me about your childhood, Jack, then I'll consider telling you about mine," Regan snapped. Looking at the road, she  _felt_  rather than saw McCoy freeze and withdraw into himself at her words, so completely that for an instant she could have sworn there was nobody in the car beside her.

_Something there_ , she thought.  _Something bad._ Shehadn't planned that shot across his bows to be quite so close to the heart.

A long moment later, McCoy cleared his throat.

"We both grew up with a cop in the house," he said, "that's something we have in common."

Regan looked at the road, at her hands clenched on the wheel. She was being inexcusably rude, by squad-car standards, and she knew it.  _Mind you_ , _so is he. You don't go asking questions after you've seen the Keep-out sign._

_You don't go receiving confidences in stony silence, either._

_"It made me angry. I was **angry**  with her. And then she was dead."_

"My Gran-Da used to call my side of the family the no-good Seattle Markhams," Regan said at last. "My family … they run to extremes. My Gran-Da had two sons. One was a war hero. The other was a bootlegger. It's the same, every generation, every family: all bad except one. Or all good except one." She realised her hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel and forced herself to relax them, stretching out her fingers one hand at a time. "Three honours students and a hooker. Or three pot-heads and a cop. Or maybe like the McMillans, two robbers, one rapist, and the dutiful daughter."

"It doesn't hold up," McCoy said. "The analogy doesn't hold up. The McMillans – you might have been thinking Therese was the good sister in the bad family, when we were back there – but she shot a cop, Regan, in cold blood. None of her brothers did anything like that."

"Yeah," Regan said. "She thought she was the good kid. What she did was worst of all." She drove in silence a moment. "Irony's a treacherous son-of-a-bitch."

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	18. Too Much Time On The Battle Line

McCoy took the map from the glove box and checked their route. They had only a few miles more on 180-E.

"You need to take the next exit," he told Regan. "Forty-seven A."

He waited for her to move to the right-hand lane, but she kept driving as if she hadn't heard him, eyes steady on the road, hands steady on the wheel.

"Regan?" McCoy said. "You need to take the next exit. Regan?"

Regan's face didn't change, but McCoy heard the engine alter pitch as she pressed down on the accelerator. The telephone poles began to whip past at a faster rate. Regan shuffled the clutch and shifted up, still accelerating.

There was not much traffic on the road. They whipped past an SVU and McCoy caught sight of a woman's face through the window, mouth open in surprise or fear.

"Regan!" he said sharply. "Quit playing around."

The engine whined higher. Ahead McCoy could see the road curving away to the right, how sharply he couldn't tell. Regan had her foot to the floor, and the car was starting to shake with speed, engine redlining. McCoy put his hand on the dashboard  _for all the good **that'll**_   _do._

"Regan, for chrissakes!" he barked.

They whipped around the curve and into a sharper bend beyond it. The wheels squealed on the road as the car slid a little and for a heart-stopping second McCoy thought Regan was going to have them both into the guardrail. He barely had time to realise there was a hatchback in the lane ahead of them before Regan changed lanes and blew past it.

Then they were past the bend and coming up on the exit at well over any legal or sane speed.

_She's going to go straight past it – and what? Put the car into a tree? Under a truck?_

He tried one more time. "Regan!"

She pressed her lips together and he thought she was going to keep ignoring him, but then, just as the road divided, she swerved hard, shuffling between the brake and the clutch, downshifting and turning as naturally as if she were simply stepping around a chair on her way across a room. The tyres screeched and then slipped a little, but Regan steered into and through the incipient skid, then spun the wheel hard the other way and stomped on the gas, sending the car down the exit ramp as if that was what she'd always intended.

At the bottom of the ramp she stopped at the stop sign. McCoy took a careful breath, his pulse slowing.

"Pull over," he ordered her. "I'll drive the rest of the way."

Regan looked for a moment as if she were going to argue, but then nodded tightly. She turned the corner, then drew the car over to the side of the road and parked. Leaving the keys in the ignition, she got out. McCoy got out as well, expecting Regan to walk around the car to change seats, but she turned her back to him and strode off along the road

"What the  _hell_  was that?" McCoy yelled after at her.

Regan stopped after a half-dozen yards and stood facing away from him, arms folded tightly and head bowed. After a moment she turned and walked back to the passenger side of the car, not looking at McCoy.

"Didn't mean to scare you," she said tersely and got in the car.

"Which would have been a  _comfort_  if you'd totalled the car," McCoy said equally tersely as he got behind the wheel.

"Fine. I'm sorry," Regan said. "I'm sorry, all right? Will that do?"

_Not nearly_ , McCoy thought, pulling onto the road again. He glanced at Regan and saw her leaning her elbow on the door and her head on her hand, fingers covering her mouth. Her gaze was on some distant horizon far beyond what could be seen from the car window.

_What the hell was she racing towards?_ he wondered – and then, with a chill –  _Or away from?_

He cleared his throat. Regan sat, locked in stillness.

McCoy chose his words carefully.

"Have you thought about … maybe – maybe talking to someone?" he suggested. "Professionally?"

"I don't need a shrink," Regan said. "I'm just fine."

"You are  _not_  just fine," McCoy said with some asperity.

"Look, I admit," Regan said, "I haven't exactly had it together. But things are a little  _unusual_  right now. I don't, in the normal course of events, get shot at or see people shot dead." Her voice was rising with anger. "Certainly not a week after having seven colours of crap kicked out of me by some  _lunatic_  bent on raping and  _killing_  me. The circumstances are hardly representative. In the normal run of things,  _I'm just fine._ "

"Yeah?" McCoy said. "Would William Perry say the same thing?"

"William Perry? I should have hit him harder," Regan said hotly.

"You'd be out of a job," McCoy pointed out.

"I'm about to be out of a job anyway, aren't I? Aren't you working up to sending me on administrative leave?"

McCoy paused. "I think you need it. I think you think you need it too."

"Oh, you're  _psychic_  now?" Regan said.

"Psychic or not, I'm your boss," McCoy pointed out. "If I want to send you home, you'll go home."

"Fine," Regan said tightly. "Whatever."

The silence grew between them and developed an edge, the silence of two people too angry to talk rather than the companionable quiet of two people with no need for words. McCoy glanced at Regan from time to time and saw her, jaw set, staring out the window.

_This is ridiculous_ , he thought after nearly twenty minutes, and cleared his throat. Trying to sound conversational, he said: "I'll drop you straight home, if you like."

"Nah," Regan said, voice likewise light, albeit with an edge of strain. "Exploit your position – I'll drop  _you_  off and take the car back."

"I'll go with you back to the office," McCoy said. "I want to go over the depositions on Whitford before tomorrow morning."

"Okay," Regan said, and then paused. "Do you mind if I keep the car for a couple of hours?"

"No, of course not," McCoy said. "Got some errands?"

"No, I – " she said, and hesitated. "No. I want to go out to Rikers."

"Rikers? Why?" McCoy asked.

"Because someone should tell Timmy McMillan that his sister's dead," Regan said.

"Regan, someone who isn't you!" McCoy protested. "Adler will make a meal out of that in court. I'll call Adler when we get back to the office – he can tell McMillan."

"He wasn't there, Jack," Regan said stubbornly. "It should be someone who was there."

"Maybe in a perfect world – " McCoy began. Regan interrupted him.

"In a  _perfect world_  nobody would have  _died_  yesterday," she snarled, voice rising almost to a shout, "just because I wanted to ask a few more questions about some kid who reminded me of – " She bit the rest of the sentence back and fell silent.

McCoy waited a few moments, watching the white line roll under the car and the telephone polls speed towards them and then flick past the window, and then said firmly: "Regan, it isn't your job. It isn't something you can do, in this job. That's just how it is. You're an ADA – not a cop. You can't …" He paused, then ploughed ahead. "You can't 'take care' of Timmy McMillan. If that's the job you want to do, you should have stayed a cop."

"Well, I would have if I could have, Jack!" Regan snapped, hands in her lap balled into fists.

"There's no  _maybe_  about those choices," McCoy quoted back at her, not without a twinge of satisfaction. "We make them. We can pretend they're forced on us, but that's really bullshit."

"Fuck you," Regan said coldly.

"Getting called out on double standards really sucks, doesn't it?" McCoy said sarcastically.

Regan chewed her lip for a moment. "Yeah, okay," she said at last, voice picking up heat and volume as she went on, "okay, you're right, that secret thought you have, that I ran away. I did. My Gran-Da – I thought that if I did everything he did, did it the way he did it, I'd turn into him. But in the end I just wasn't strong enough. He did what had to be done, and kept going. I couldn't. I wasn't tough enough.  _I ran away_. If I couldn't have a happy ending I wanted a goddamn fresh start. So here I am."

The tires hissed over the road. Regan's breath came fast and shallow. McCoy looked at her, at her hands clenched in her lap, her set jaw and hunched shoulders.

"These terrible old men who shape our lives," he said at last. "Men we can't live up to, can't live down. But they're just men, in the end. You found you couldn't turn into him? Maybe that's not because you're not strong enough. Maybe you're stronger than he was."

"You wouldn't say that if you knew him, Jack," Regan said. "You really really wouldn't."

"Maybe I didn't know  _him_ ," McCoy said. "But I do know  _you_. And I can tell you now, I  _don't_ believe you weren't strong enough. For anything."

Regan shook her head silently.

McCoy took one hand off the wheel and reached out to cover Regan's hand with his own, his larger grip wrapping around her fist. "You sell yourself short. Don't do that." He paused, and went on in a lighter tone. "Defence lawyers can sense uncertainty."

"They're not the only ones," Regan muttered, in something close to her normal voice. McCoy laughed, and let her go. Regan ran her hands over her face. "What if Adler was there at Rikers?" she asked. "He couldn't complain then, could he? If it was a case conference?"

McCoy considered. "This is really important to you, isn't it?"

"It's really important, Jack. This boy's elder sister died yesterday. He should know. Not just some official notification. The McMillans – they might be the scum of the earth to the rest of us, but they deserve at least some of the considerations we give to real people."

"I know you don't think like that," McCoy said sharply, "and kindly don't ascribe those attitudes to  _me_ , either."

"Well, then," Regan said. "Can we get Adler to Rikers?"

McCoy thought about it for a minute. Finally he took one hand off the wheel and fished his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. He held it out to Regan.

"Get him on the line for me," he said. "Then we'll see."

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	19. Can't You Tell Me How The Mountain Got This High

_Riker's Island Correctional Facility_

_3.15 pm Sunday 3 December 2006_

* * *

 

The gate rattled open. Regan finished clipping her ID tag to her coat pocket and stepped through. McCoy followed her. As they waited for the warden to unlock the door of the interview room for them, he thought that in the grey prison light Regan looked weary beyond exhaustion.

"I can do this," he said to her. "You don't have to -"

"Yes I do have to," Regan corrected him quietly. The warden opened the door for them and Regan straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, then led the way into the interview room.

McCoy knew that Timmy McMillan hadn't been in jail long enough to acquire a "jailhouse tan" but he was pasty and pale, thin hair lying limp on his forehead. Now he knew what he was looking for, McCoy could see the signs of mild foetal alcohol syndrome in the boy's features, especially the smooth upper lip.

_Boy_. Timmy McMillan was a man as far as the law was concerned but it was hard for McCoy to see him as one.  _Not just because of his height and build_ , although Timmy was closer to the size one would expect in a fourteen or fifteen year old. There was something – McCoy groped for the right word.  _Not innocent_.  _A long way from innocent._

Something both dangerous and child-like in the watery blue eyes that met McCoy's gaze.

"This better be good, Jack," Bernie Adler said, biting his words off even more than usual. Despite being summoned to the jail on a Sunday afternoon, he was in a suit and tie. He lounged in a chair beside his client, affecting his usual air of cynical  _ennui_  but McCoy could see Adler's eyes glitter with well-controlled anger.

McCoy knew that it was not simply the inconvenience of an unexpected prison visit that had raised Adler's hackles. The defence lawyer was here in response to McCoy's call, that simple fact establishing a pecking order that would stick in Adler's throat and choke him like a mouthful of humble pie. Adler didn't have control of the meeting and he didn't know what the agenda was.

_And Bernie hates to be at a disadvantage._

_Almost as much as I do._

McCoy met Adler's gaze and gave him a nod and a deliberately smug grin. Adler's answering smile was coldly perfunctory.

Regan ignored Adler. She pulled out the chair opposite Timmy and sat down. McCoy took the seat beside her as Regan leaned forward a little, hands folded in front of her.

"Timmy," she said. "Timmy, I need to talk to you about your sister Therese."

"Jack, what  _is_ this?" Adler complained.

Timmy McMillan spoke at the same time. "Terry?" he said, immediately wary. "What about her?"

"I'm sorry to have to tell you, Timmy, that she's dead," Regan said gently and evenly. McCoy studied her, reminded of the way she'd described her role as a cop – not  _Catching the bad guys_ or  _enforcing the law_  but _being there for people when they really need someone to be there, taking care of them when no-one else can._ Whatever Regan thought of Timmy McMillan, whatever her role might be in the trial that would determine his fate, it was clear to McCoy that right at this instant in the interview room at Rikers, Regan saw Timmy as a bereaved young man and nothing else.

Timmy stared in silence for a few seconds. "Dead? Something happened with the baby?"

"No," Regan said. "She was killed in a shootout with police."

"No!" Timmy said. "Terry? No! That son-of-a-bitch Dawson murdered her, that's what happened!"

"Did he have reason to?" McCoy asked instantly. Timmy's attention turned to him.

"Well, what's going to happen to his marriage when she turns up with his baby?" the boy asked with an eye-roll that was pure teenager.

"How did you know it was his baby?" McCoy asked.

"I was the one who found her, after, crying on the ground behind the house," Timmy said. For a second his eyes were lizard flat and cold.  _His eyes are older than he is_ , McCoy thought. "She told me what he done to her."

"Okay, time out," Adler said. "Is there something on the table here, Jack? Because it sounds to me like you're trying to get some help on another case, and my client would like know what the  _quid pro quo_  is."

"There's no open case," McCoy said. "There's no question that Therese McMillan shot Bill Dawson. And she's dead."

"Then excuse me, but why exactly are we here?" Adler asked.

"My ADA felt that basic decency dictated informing Mr McMillan about his family tragedy personally."

"And why are  _you_  here?" Adler asked. "Because I know basic decency isn't  _generally_  a motivation for you."

" _I've_ got your measure, Bernie," McCoy said. "But I try not to throw my rookies in the pool with you without water wings."

"I'm flattered," Adler said. "But still bemused."

Regan shot McCoy a glare and then turned it on Adler. "The two of you might want to continue your di – discussion outside, Counsellors," she said, her tone milder than her ferocious expression. She turned back to Timmy McMillan. "Timmy, can you tell me more about Therese – Terry – and her relationship with Bill Dawson?"

"Relationship?" Timmy said, and snorted. "Weren't no  _relationship_. He made her do what he wanted, then he got her with that baby, and then he told her to get rid of it and that he doesn't want anything to do with her."

"But she wanted to keep the baby," Regan said.

"One day she wanted, the next day she didn't." Timmy shrugged. "She couldn't do anything without money, anyway. By the time I got the money, it was too late, the doctor said she'd have to have it no matter what. So he killed her. The son of a bitch!"

"She fired first, Timmy," Regan said. "I was there."

"Then what did he do?" Timmy demanded. "What did that son-of-a-bitch do?"

"He didn't attack her, if that's what you're asking," McCoy said.

"She wouldn't – she wouldn't  _just_  – she wouldn't – " Timmy's face worked and tears came to his eyes. "She always hated him, ever since he forced her and got that baby in her, but she wouldn't – I want him to pay. I want him to pay for this!"

_I want …_ McCoy's prosecutorial instincts stirred.  _I want …_ Anything a defendant wanted beyond acquittal was a lever the DA's Office could use to move them.  _I want …_

" Dawson's  _dead_ ," Regan said.

"Oh, and now he gets remembered as the cop hero killed by one of the no-good McMillans? No!" Timmy slammed his fist down on the table. "People should know what he did! People should know what kind of a man he was."

"There's a lot of difficulty getting evidence of that admitted," Regan said in a colourless, matter-of-fact tone. "Now they're both dead."

McCoy saw where she was going. He did his best to keep the knowledge off his face.  _Now she'll start explaining hearsay rules to him_ , he thought.

"There's got to be some way! You can tell them!" Timmy said.

" _We_  can't tell them," Regan said. "We're not witnesses. That would be what's called hearsay, you see."

McCoy did not usually take a back seat in an interrogation and he didn't like it. He did, however, like to  _win_ , and he sat still and quiet and watched Regan reel Timmy in, not doing anything to disturb her concentration or the fragile web she was weaving around the boy.

"What about those tests? They do them on the television, they show who the baby's father is. Can you do those tests on the baby in Therese?" Timmy asked.

"That won't prove Dawson forced her," Regan said. "The only way the inquest can hear about that is maybe if  _you_  told them."

"Okay that's  _enough_ ," Adler said instantly, leaning forward to hold up his hand between Regan and Timmy. McCoy saw Timmy's eyes widen slightly and thought  _Hooked him_  and knew that Bernie Adler had seen the danger to his client but too late. Adler looked across at McCoy with narrowed eyes. "This has gone as far as it's going to go."

"What do you mean?" Timmy asked Regan.

"No, don't answer that," Adler said to Regan, leaning forward and waving his finger in her face. "This case conference is over."

"Is that what Timmy wants?" Regan asked. She spoke as gently and evenly as before, but now her gentleness seemed to McCoy to be calculating, the predatory stillness of a cat at a mouse-hole.

"I'm his attorney and I'm telling you – " Adler started.

"Do you want to listen to Mr Adler, Timmy?" Regan asked almost tenderly. "Or do you want to talk to me about how you can make things right for Terry?"

"I want to – "

" _Shut up_!" Adler hissed. "This conference is over. Anything said from now on,  _anything_ , is inadmissible and unenforceable."

_My cue_ , McCoy thought. He put on his best EADA-voice-of-authority. "Unless Mr McMillan revokes his right to counsel," he said. "Do you want to do that, Mr McMillan?"

"He does not," Adler snapped, at the same moment as Timmy said:

"What does that mean?"

"It means you can talk to us, just you and me, Timmy, without Mr Adler," Regan said.

"You do  _not_  want to do that," Adler said.

"I think I do," Timmy said.

"No, no, listen to me Timmy, listen to me," Adler said urgently. "They aren't your friends. They are  _trying_  to  _trick_  you."

"I'm not stupid," Timmy bridled.

"I'm not saying that," Adler reassured him. "I'm  _not_  saying that. But Mr McCoy is a very smart man and he tricks people for a living. He wants to put you in jail, Timmy, for a very long time. I am trying to keep you out of jail. So  _listen_  to me, Timmy."

"You're going to jail, Timmy," McCoy said. "There's no question about that. And Mr Adler knows it."

"But we can work together to do what's right by Terry," Regan said smoothly, half a beat after McCoy finished talking. "If you keep talking to us. Timmy?"

"What is this, good prosecutor, bad prosecutor?" Adler snorted. "The two of you should take this show on the road. But you should take it  _out_  of this interview room, Counsellors, because the case conference is  _done._ You're  _done_."

"Mr Adler, please shut up," Timmy McMillan said. "I want to – what did you say, miss?"

"Revoke your right to counsel," Regan said.

"Yes. I revoke your right to counsel," Timmy said. "I mean – I guess I mean I revoke my right. Is that it?"

"I think  _you're_  done, Counsellor," McCoy said to Adler.  _Let Regan handle Timmy McMillan. Bernie Adler, however, is out of her league._

_Not out of mine._

"You are  _kidding_  me," Adler said. "What judge is going to accept that as a waiver? You are taking advantage of a naïve, borderline  _retarded_  boy and his lack of knowledge of the law. This is prosecutorial misconduct without a doubt, Jack, and if you think I won't take it to the Ethics Committee you are dreaming. If you go ahead with this you can  _kiss_  your licence – and your ass – goodbye."

McCoy grinned. He could feel his heart beating a little faster with the exhilaration of the confrontation.  _I'm going to hand you your face on a plate, Bernie Adler._ "That's a nice line in indignation you have going, Bernie, but you're forgetting that your client had been found competent by  _two_  different psychiatrists – ours  _and_  yours. You can step outside, Counsellor."

"Oh, no," Adler said. He leaned back in his seat and folded his arms. "If you think I'm going to leave you here without a witness …"

"Fine," McCoy said. "But your former client has revoked. So if you're staying, Bernie,  _sit_  there and  _shut up_ , or I won't be the one in front of the Ethics Committee."

Adler waved a hand in a gesture of concession, mimed locking his lips and threw the imaginary key over his shoulder.

"Never mind about him," Timmy said to Regan. "Tell me what you're going to do about Terry?"

"The only way the inquest can hear about what happened to Terry is if you tell them," Regan said. Hyper-aware of everything in the room, McCoy could hear the steel beneath Regan's coaxing tones. He knew exactly what she was going to say next.  _A question of admissibility_. "She told you what happened right afterwards. That's called 'outcry' testimony. That's the only way the evidence would be admissible."

McCoy was ready with the next strand in the web. "But you can't go up there from Rikers," he added. "There are rules about sending prisoners to testify and they say that remand prisoners can't be sent out for coronial inquests."

"Why not?" Timmy asked.

"The rules are the rules, Timmy," Regan said and McCoy nodded resignedly.

"Then how can I tell them about Dawson and Terry?" Timmy asked.

"You can't go up there if you're on remand," Regan said.  _But in the state prison system …_  McCoy thought, and Regan said: "But once you're in the system, once you're in Sing-Sing or someplace like it, the rules are different."

"A  _sentenced_  prisoner can be sent up to testify at Carthage," McCoy said.

Timmy looked from McCoy to Regan and back, frowning. "So if I'm guilty in court, I can tell them what happened to Terry, but if I'm just suspected, I can't?"

"I know it sounds crazy," Regan said, "but there are two different prison systems, you see, and they don't really talk to each other." She shrugged a little, making a face that said  _Out of my hands, I'm afraid._

McCoy leaned forward a little – not too far, not enough to intimidate Timmy.  _Just enough to make him think he's hearing a confidence._

"But if you take a plea," he told the boy, "We can get that processed right away. First thing tomorrow. Then you can be called as a witness to the inquest."

"We'll  _make sure_  you're called as a witness," Regan said.

"And you can tell the world what happened to Terry," McCoy said.

"And what kind of man Dawson was," Regan added.

They both fell silent, watching Timmy expectantly. He chewed on his thumbnail. "You want me to plead guilty?"

"I want you to do right by your sister," Regan said. "She always did right by you, didn't she?"

Adler leaned forward as if to speak, caught McCoy's gaze and leaned back again.

"She did right by me," Timmy agreed, tears coming to his eyes. He sniffled. "But I don't think she'd want me to go to jail. I don't think that's what she'd want."

"You know, Timmy, when we were up in Carthage yesterday," Regan said, "And we talked to Terry, she told us about this game you had. A game for the TV? Where you chase women around and make them have sex?"

"She never liked that game," Timmy said.

"She said she thought maybe that's what you were trying to do with Louise Yates," Regan said. "That even though you told the police that your friends made you, really you wanted to. Why would she tell us that, Timmy?"

"I don't know?" Timmy said, tears rolling down his cheeks. He sniffled loudly and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his prison jumpsuit. "She wouldn't want me to get in trouble."

"She always did right by you, Timmy," Regan said. "Always. And she was doing right by you then. Doing what she knew was best for you. Because she knew it was best for you to stand up and take responsibility for what you did. Stand up and tell the truth." Timmy shook his head over and over again, but Regan persisted, gentle, coaxing, implacable. "Why else would she, Timmy? Why else would she tell us that? Why else would she tell us about you wanting to find a girl and make her like you? Why else unless she knew that you needed to make things right. Make them right for Louise Yates. Make them right for yourself. Make them right for Terry." Her voice ran on, steady and almost hypnotic, her gaze holding Timmy's. "She knew it was time for you to be a man. She knew that, Timmy. She was trying to help you. Now it's your turn to help her. You need to do what's right here before you can do that."

"I'm – sc-sc-scared," Timmy sobbed.

Regan reached across the table and took his hand in both hers. "I'm right here," she assured him. "I'm right here. Don't be scared. I'm right here."

Timmy met her gaze. For a long moment they looked at each other, and then –

_Landed him._

– then McCoy felt Timmy McMillan's resistance break. The boy nodded, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and started talking.

* * *

 

.oOo.

* * *

 


	20. Our Dreams Will Have To Serve Us

"How do you sleep at night, Jack?" Bernie Adler asked softly.

"How do  _I_  sleep at night?" McCoy said incredulously. "By reminding myself that I don't spend my days helping rapists and murderers evade their just desserts, Bernie, that's how!"

Regan ignored them both. She used her pen to point to each paragraph in Timmy McMillan's confession as she took him through it point by point.

Her voice sounded distant and tinny in her ears but she didn't think any of the men noticed. Her handwriting marched over the pages, even and steady, the upright lines of the 't's and 'l's as dark and parallel as the prison bars Timmy McMillan would be spending the next twenty-five years of his life behind.

"And this is where you said you pushed her down on her knees," she explained to Timmy. "And here's where you said you – " Cold sweat broke out on her face and she swallowed hard. "Where you made her – and here's where you talked about what happened afterwards."

"Yes," Timmy said, nodding.

"Now you need to sign at the bottom of the page," Regan told him.

"Again? I already signed!"

"Every page needs to be signed," Regan said patiently for the third or fourth time.

"As if he knows what's going on here!" Adler scoffed  _sotto voce_  to McCoy.

"The law says he does, Counsellor," McCoy said.

"This is not the end of this," Adler warned as Timmy signed the last page.

"Don't be a sore loser," McCoy told him smugly.

Regan folded the pages carefully and put them in her inside coat pocket. "Okay, Timmy," she said. "We'll see you in the court tomorrow morning to make all this formal."

"And then can I go to Carthage?" Timmy asked.

"We'll see," Regan told him. "I'll call the county attorney up there tonight and see what's what, okay? And I'll tell you when I see you tomorrow."

"Okay," Timmy said.

Regan put her hands flat on the table, ready to push herself to her feet and then hesitated. "Timmy," she said softly. "Timmy. Knowing what Bill Dawson did to your sister, how could you go and do the same thing to Louise Yates?"

He looked at her, and tears welled up in his eyes. "It wasn't supposed to be like that," he sniffled. "That wasn't how it was supposed to go!"

_That wasn't how it was supposed to go._

Regan looked at Timmy McMillan's red-rimmed eyes and pasty face, at his stooped shoulders and soft hands.  _Born for jail_ , she thought, so tired she could have lain right down on the floor of the interview room and slept for a lifetime.  _One of the no-good Carthage McMillans. Born for jail._

_That wasn't how it was supposed to go._

"It never is," she said to him, and pushed herself to her feet. McCoy and Adler were still verbally sparring by the door. They traded quips and ripostes past her. Regan didn't even try to listen. She kept her hand on the crackling paper pages that damned Timmy McMillan and waited for the warden to let them out.

All the way down the corridor, signing out at the desk, turning in her tag, she kept one hand on that signed confession.  _Signed, sealed, delivered._

_Signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours._

Regan knew she had Timmy McMillan's future in her hand, for sure.

_Take it easy. Keep it separate. Keep thinking like a lawyer._

"I guess you were right about Therese McMillan," McCoy said as they headed for the doors to the parking lot. Regan looked at him blankly. "There was more to it than just a cop-killing. She  _did_  have it in for Dawson, for Dawson specifically. If she'd gone to trial, she might have got a good deal with an EED defence."

"Not against you," Regan said, hearing it in his voice.

"She killed a cop," McCoy said.

"She killed her rapist," Regan said. It was already dark in the Riker's Island parking lot and the wind had picked up. Regan folded her arms, hunching her shoulders against the chill.

"You sound almost sympathetic," McCoy said. "What, she was some kind of  _hero_  who sacrificed her own life and the life of her child to kill the man who – "

Regan cut him off. "It's only sacrifice when you give up something you  _value_."

McCoy unlocked the car and Regan climbed in to the passenger side, leaned her head back against the headrest, and closed her eyes.

_That's it. I'm done._

_This wasn't how it was supposed to go._ Timmy McMillan's words had summed up the feeling that seethed beneath the surface of Regan's life, the abyss that she teetered over like a tight-rope walker over Niagara Falls. _It wasn't supposed to be like this._

Her old life was gone. Her old life was  _over_. She had to  _adapt_. She had to  _adjust_.

_This wasn't how it was supposed to go._

She had to stop wanting things she could never have.

If she didn't, she'd go under.

_I was a good cop. And that was all I ever looked to be._

_And now I'm not._

_It wasn't supposed to be like this._

For just second on the road she had been gripped by a fantasy that if she didn't stop, if she didn't turn, if she just kept driving, driving fast enough, she could drive all the way back. Back to her old life. Back to Seattle. Back to the past.

_Just the white line. Just the road and the car._

_It was never supposed to be like this._

"What now?" Regan asked McCoy tiredly as he turned over the ignition.

"Paperwork," he said, and Regan nodded.

"Right," she said. "No rest for the wicked."

"And no rest for brilliant prosecutors, either," McCoy said, grinning. "That was great work in there, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Regan said. From the look on McCoy's face he was expecting something more from her. Regan groped for the right words. "You really nailed him."

"I was pretty good," McCoy said. "But it wasn't solitaire. I held Adler off you, but you reeled McMillan in." He turned to look at her. "You really connected with him. You found the way in. That was good work. If you can do that in a courtroom …" He shrugged. "How did you know what line to take?"

"Cruelty and sentimentality usually go hand in hand, Jack," Regan said wearily. "It's not rocket science." She put her hand in her pocket again and the pages of Timmy's confession crackled under her fingers.

"You want to give that to me?" McCoy suggested. "For safe-keeping?"

Regan took the papers from her pocket and weighed them in her hand. "For safe-keeping? In case I think better of what I just did and throw them out the window?"

McCoy paused. "You seem more sympathetic to the McMillans than I would have expected."

Regan held out the confession to him and when he didn't immediately take it she dropped it in his lap. "They never had one chance, none of them, not a one of them had  _one single chance_. And that boy sits in there and says to me 'It wasn't supposed to be like that,' and by god, Jack, he's right. He's right!" She realised she was shouting at him, that tears were streaming down her face, and fumbled for the door handle to get out of the car.

McCoy hit the central locking and when Regan reached for the lock on her side he grabbed her wrist. "Hey, hey, Regan, Regan!"

"It wasn't supposed to be like this!" she screamed, and then, crying too hard to speak, she doubled over, clasping her hands over her mouth in a vain effort to stifle her sobs.

 _Get it together, girl_ , an old man's crackly voice told her.  _Ain't no-one going to give you quarter because you're weak._

_Get it together, girl! I raised you tougher than this!_

_You raised me to do what had to be done,_ Regan thought, trying to stifle the gulping sobs that tore through her.  _And I did. But you never told me how much it cost._

His disapproval was as real to her as if he really had lived long enough to be disappointed in her. She could feel it in the car with her, a crushing monumental presence, as real and suffocating as a bullet in her lung or a noose around her neck.

_I'm done. I can't. I just can't._

Then Regan felt McCoy's hand warm and firm on her back, heard his voice drowning out memory, telling her to take it easy.

Telling her to breathe.

And after a while she was able to. She sat up, wiping at her cheeks with the sleeves of her coat. "Sorry," she mumbled.

Her movement had dislodged McCoy's hand from her back. He leaned back a little, studying her. "You want to tell me about it," he said, and it wasn't a question.

Regan sniffed hard and scrubbed her face with her coat sleeve again. "My Gran-Da –" she said, stopped. Then she took a breath deep enough to pull at her cracked ribs. "My Gran-Da pulled up outside my parents' house and he looked at me and he looked at my brothers and my sister and he picked me. I was the one in my family who was going to be worth something, and he picked me and took me home with him. He left my brothers behind.  _I_ left my brothers behind. I got a chance. My family had one chance, and  _I got it._  And if I hadn't, Jack, I might have been Therese McMillan."

"No," McCoy said, shaking his head. "No, Regan. Our families aren't – they aren't  _destiny_.  _We_  are responsible for what we do. The Bernie Adlers of the world might try and argue down personal responsibility – but that's just a courtroom song-and-dance act." He gripped her arm. "Therese McMillan made her choice. You would never have done what she did."

"We never know what we're capable of, Jack, until we're put to the test, until we pass or fail," Regan said. She shrugged. "But the thing is – " Her eyes filled with tears again and she wiped them angrily away. "The thing is, Jack, that goddamn chance I got, that chance to get out, to choose my own life over taking care of my brothers, that chance Therese never had – it was for nothing. Because whoever she was, that girl that he raised – that girl he told, over and over – you're a Markham, act like one – that girl – she's gone." She looked up and met his gaze. "She's  _gone_ , Jack."

"Because – because you got hurt and found you had no life to go back to?" McCoy asked, and Regan recognised her own words. She gave a painful little whimper of laugher.

"Among other things," she said. "Among other things." She wiped her face one more time. "So what happens now? You go back to the office and start the paper on McMillan and I go home for mandatory leave?"

"We'll talk about mandatory leave later. Right now – " McCoy paused. "Those papers are going in with both our names on them. You've earned  _that_. So you want to come back to the office to help me cross 't's and dot 'i's?"

Regan recognized a reprieve even when it was unexpected. "Sure," she said.

McCoy put the car in drive. "I have one errand to run first," he said as he pulled the car out onto the road. "I need to drop in on Abbie Carmichael." He glanced at her. "Yeah, I know, I know. I love the white horse."

"It suits you," Regan said, and saw the corner of McCoy's mouth quirk a little.  _Vain S.O.B._ , she thought with a warming trickle of fond amusement. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, letting the motion of the car lull her. Exhaustion still weighed her down but she felt oddly peaceful – as if she had been swimming a long way against the current and finally come safely to the river bank.

When she opened her eyes again the car was stopped in a residential street of nice, if slightly dilapidated, brownstones. McCoy killed the engine and turned to look at her.

"We're here," he said unnecessarily.

"Okay," Regan said.

McCoy got out and then turned to lean in the door again. "You coming?" he asked.

"I'll wait here," Regan said.

"No, come on," McCoy said. "Abbie won't mind."

"I'm fine," Regan said. "I'll just – "

"Regan," McCoy said exasperatedly, "Get your ass out of the car."

Regan looked at him and realised she had no choice but to give in.

She lagged behind him as he crossed the street and climbed a flight of stairs to the door of one of the houses. Regan noted that the porch light was on.

_Jack McCoy tells Abbie Carmichael he'll come by to change a light bulb for her and she's sure enough he'll keep his word that she turns on the light for him._

Regan could remember what that was like, although she tried not to.  _Don't want what you can't have._

_Adapt._

_Adjust._

_We all have to trust somebody,_ she'd told McCoy flippantly in the last days of the Firenze trial. Regan knew now that in her case it was true, whether she liked it or not. She would have liked to believe it wasn't. She would have liked to believe that it was just her, on her own, behind her safe glass wall , everybody else on the other side of it.

_Because the problem with glass is that you get cut to ribbons when it breaks._

After a moment the door opened, revealing a gust of warmth, a blaze of light and Abbie Carmichael in jeans and a sweater.

"Jack," Abbie said with what Regan judged to be genuine delight. She opened her arms and McCoy stepped into her embrace, enveloping her slim frame in a warm hug.

Regan looked down at her feet, feeling as if her presence was an intrusion on their obviously close and comfortable relationship. She looked up when McCoy said, "You remember Regan Markham?"

"Of course," Abbie said, reaching past McCoy to hold out her hand to Regan. Her handshake was firm, the smile that came with it, warm.

"We've just come from Rikers," McCoy said. "With a long night of paperwork waiting – Regan's been patient with my detour."

"More than I would have been," Abbie said. "Don't let him tie you up  _all_  weekend, Regan, or you won't see daylight one month to the next."

"Too late," Regan said.

"Well, I wasn't going to have you getting up on that ladder," McCoy told Abbie.

"I'm pregnant, Jack, not  _crippled_ ," Abbie said, rolling her eyes at Regan. Regan couldn't help returning her smile. She looked at the tall woman with her arm still linked through McCoy's, glowing with happiness and with the child growing within her.  _It was supposed to be like **that**_ Reganthought.  _Marriage, children, a friend you can count on –whether it's to have your back when the chips are down, or to change a light bulb._

_I should be jealous of her. Maybe even hate her._

Instead, Regan found herself looking at Abbie Carmichael and her wonderful life the way she might admire a work of art.  _You can't paint a Rembrandt yourself but that doesn't mean you don't like looking at one._

Abbie stepped back from the open door. "I've got cocoa warming," she said. "Come in out of the cold, you two."

McCoy took a step forward. He and Abbie made one silhouette in the doorway, light spilling past them down the stairs.

Regan wavered, looking at the two of them together, looking at what she could not have and what she knew she could not afford to want.

_They don't need Banquo's Ghost in there with them._

"I'll just – " Regan said, McCoy and Abbie blurring as her eyes filled with tears she refused to let fall. "I'll –"

McCoy turned, and Regan bit her lip before it could tremble, and made an effort at a smile, gesturing behind her towards the car.

"Door's open, Regan," McCoy said.

She hesitated. McCoy reached out and took her hand, and drew her after him, over the threshold, into the warmth of the house.

* * *

 

_< fin>_

* * *

 


End file.
